the see of Treves vacant, no proper investigation, as directed by the Council of Trent, could take place. Perhaps the legal investigation which is promised by Dr. Friedenthal may prove more efficacious in bringing the real facts to light. Meanwhile, it may be feared that belief in the Marpingen apparition will become a test question of Catholic orthodoxy in Germany, as belief in Lourdes and La Salette has long been a criterion for discriminating the bien pensants in France, in spite of the manly protests of some high authorities, such as Dupanloup, against this morbid craving for predictions and portents. We have never denied that German Catholics have a substantial grievance in the matter of the Falk laws, but they certainly will not improve their position with thinking men of any creed by adopting devices which can only escape graver censure if they are regarded as too silly to be dishonest.—Saturday Review.
| THE SOURCE OF MUSCULAR POWER. |
THE advance of modern research has brought the sciences of physics, chemistry, and physiology, into very close relations, and as the two former have given great help to the latter, many are looking to see all physiological problems finally resolved on physical and chemical principles. Much is to be expected from the future, but sanguine anticipations should not be allowed to misinterpret existing facts. Prof. Austin Flint, Jr., has been much occupied in investigating the living system as a dynamical engine, and has published the results of his experimental inquiries in a little volume, entitled "The Source of Muscular Power." He has made an important contribution to the subject of animal mechanics, and his views will be so interesting, alike to the physiologist and the general student, that a summary of his argument will be appreciated by the readers of the Monthly.
Since it has been ascertained that the force derived from chemical action which will raise the temperature of a pound of water 1° Fahr. will, under another form of manifestation, lift 772 pounds one foot high, 772 foot-pounds have been regarded as the force-equivalent of 1° of heat. In other words, if the burning or oxidation of a certain definite weight of matter will raise the temperature of one pound of water 1° Fahr., the force-value of this matter is said to be 772 foot-pounds.
In the animal economy, certain matters are taken in and consumed as food; matters are discharged from the body in the form of excretions, such as the constituents of the urine; a certain amount of heat is produced in the body in order to maintain the animal temperature, to supply the loss of heat dependent upon radiation from the surface; a
