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VITALISM : A BUIEF HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL REVIEW. 229 far-reaching influence on vitalistic doctrines. They made it evident that the great anima of Stahl was insufficient to account for those phenomena of life which were exhibited by isolated portions of fresh tissues. Already in the previous century this difficulty had been felt, and the appearances were then attributed to an " inherent tendency in the spirits and humours of the tissue in question ". Partly resulting from the inadequacy of such explanation, and partly owing to the rife spirit of speculation of the day, a vast mushroom- growth of vitalism appeared at the close of the eighteenth century. In the school at Montpellier founded by Sauvages, Theophile de Bordeu (1722-1776) refused to accept Stahl's unitary conception of soul and vital principle. The import- ance of the all-powerful anima dwindled, and its functions became appropriated by vital forces resident in the various tissues of the body. Bordeu's successor, Paul Joseph Barthez (1734-1806), not only opposed the animism of Stahl and the teaching of mechanism but bitterly attacked Haller's theories which had led Bordeu to give to every organ its peculiar sensibility. Louis Dumas (1765-1813) set up a force hypermechanique as the unknown and unknowable principle of life, a standpoint somewhat similar to that adopted by the great vitalist Xavier Bichat, at Paris. Lordat distinguished three distinct parts in man, material, vital and psychical, and maintained that rational life resulted from a superposition of the psychical on the material and vital elements. Meanwhile in Germany, where vitalism was not so prominent, Keil (1759-1813) clearly stated the notion of a special force peculiar to living substance, which, arising from a peculiar combination of the elements, con- trolled the play of mechanical forces ; while Blumenbach remained to utilise a nisus formativus in the same loose fashion as the doctrines of nervous fluid and of stimulation were being employed in England. Experiment, however, running like a tortoise beside swift-footed Theory, was rapidly outstripping it in the race for Truth. The investigations of Galvani, von Humboldt, Priestley, Lavoisier and Charles Bell could not fail to convince physiologists how uncertain and indefinite were their conceptions of vital force. A few of the old school yet lingered. Thus Treviranus (1779-1837) established a hypothesis on the basis of a powerful indestructible formless material universally accompanying vital phenomena ; and Autenrieth conceived an imponderable independent force which with the blood ebbed and flowed between the tissues. Ultimately, however, with the appearance of Johannes