Respiration
"The mechanistic theory of life is now outworn and must soon take its place in history as a passing phase in the development of biology. But physiology will not go back to the vitalism which was threatening to strangle it, and from which it escaped last century. The real lesson of the movement of that time will never be lost. The book belongs to a transition period, but the transition is forward and not backward. My treatment of the subject may possibly be looked on askance in some quarters as reactionary: for I have been largely influenced by the ideas and work of older physiologists. If, however, I have gone backward, it is only to pick up clues which had been temporarily lost; and all of these clues lead forward--forward to a new physiology which embodies what was really implicit in the old. The leaders of the mechanistic movement of last century got rid of vitalism, but in doing so got rid of life itself. I have tried to paint a picture of the body as alive
eBook, English, 1922
Yale University Press ; Humphrey Milford : Oxford University Press, New Haven, Conn., London, 1922