Excerpt from A Short History of Medicine: Introducing Medical Principles to Students and Non-Medical ReadersA work on Medicine must be colored, in some degree, by its author's conception of the nature of Life. On this theme there are divers views, for the full discussion of which there is here no place. The author professes himself, however, an adherent of a school of thought that is not, at present, greatly in fashion. He ranges himself as a vitalist under the banner of Aristotle and as a follower in the goodly company Of Harvey, Hunter and Virchow, of Claude Bernard and Johannes Muller. He believes that there is a principle in living things that cannot be expressed in chemical or physical terms. He believes that this principle works to an intelligible end, that it is an Entelechy, an indwelling purposiveness, and that it is as real a thing as anything that is.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.