| Genus II. Gestation, relative | ||
| 1st. to the mother | General state of her functions. | |
| State of the womb. | ||
| 2d. to the fœtus | Of its animal life; it is almost nothing. | |
| Of its organic life | Functions that it wants. | |
| Activity of assimilation. | ||
| Of monsters. | ||
| Genus III. Parturition and subsequent phenomena | |
| 1st. Causes and mechanism of parturition. | |
| 2d. Of the lochia. | |
| 3d. Phenomena of the new born infant | Development of its animal life. |
| Functions added to its organic. | |
This is a sketch of the general plan that I have adopted in my lectures. Those who have attended them, will find here some changes in one part, and additions in another. But they can easily arrange under it all the facts that are contained in this work, if they wish to refer them to a physiological classification, instead of distributing them according to the anatomical order in which I present them here.
Though a line of demarcation separates each order of functions, it is not necessary, however, to take, in too exact a sense, the divisions pointed out above. Each order is connected with the others, more or less intimately. For example, in the first class, when one order ceases, another is soon annihilated. It is thus that I have shewn elsewhere that the heart, which is the principal agent of organic life, being interrupted, the brain, which is the central organ of animal life, is immediately stopt for the want of excitement, and the functions over which it presides are destroyed. It is thus also, as I have shown, that the brain, having under its immediate superintendence, respiration, by the means of the diaphragm and intercostals, which receive the cerebral nerves, has the circulation directly under its control, and thus the whole of organic life, which ceases when its action is interrupted. It is on this account that I have considered respiration as the link that connects animal with organic life, and have proved that a fœtus without a brain, or without something to supply its place, cannot live out of the womb of its mother. Every thing is connected, every thing is united in the animal economy. We live without and within in a distinct manner, but one life cannot be preserved as a whole, independent of the other. Thus, though the functions should be studied abstractedly, we should always have in view their connexion, when we consider the whole of them as simultaneously in operation.
It will be seen that in the Descriptive Anatomy, I have adopted a classification analogous to that of physiology. The one differs, however, a little from the other, because the same organs often serve for many functions, and especially because certain functions, such as exhalation, nutrition, calorification, have not, to speak correctly, any distinct and determinate organs.
GENERAL ANATOMY.