2661. In the mucous secretion of the intestine the condition, requisite to the formation of phosphate of lime for the bones, probably resides.
2662. In like manner in the formation of the carbonic acid and the water in the integument, the basis for the formation of phosphate of iron for the muscles may reside. In the circulation the intestine would thus be the lime-, the skin the iron-, and the liver the medulla-forming organ.
2663. The two extremes of the circulation, or intestine and lung, form gelatine and fibrine; the circulation itself forms the purely animal matter. Out of the integument and lung grows the muscle, from the intestine the bone and gelatine, out of the liver the nerve. Muscle is integument and air, bone is intestine and chyle, brain is liver and blood. Thus each has a function that is peculiar to it; each organ has its business to perform in the diffuse fabric of the animal body.
2664. Through this variety or change of the offices, the circulation first becomes possible.
2665. If the secernent process be therefore suppressed, the animal then dies as rapidly as if it had been suffocated. It is a suffocation of the opposed pole. Query? does not many a fit of apoplexy depend upon this?
2666. The circulation has consequently two factors, the lung as oxygen-pole, the capillary vessels of the body as hydrogen-pole, the blood as the indifferent water. The circulation is a galvanic process.
2667. In all extremities of the body the arteriose blood becomes deoxydized, decomposed; it is therefore basic and homonymous with the capillary vessels, so that it is consequently repelled, and driven back into the veins.
2668. It can, however, flow nowhere else than to the lung, because there resides its opposite pole. Being again oxydized in, it becomes homonymous to, the lung, is repelled by it, and again attracted by the capillary vessels of the body.
2669. The circulation is therefore a result of dynamic forces, not of mechanical functions. It would occur, were the vessels to be glass tubes.
2670. The pulsation of the heart is not a cause of the circulation, but inversely rather, its consequence or effect.