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The Human Comedy

Paris Delaunay 1822. 2 vols. 8vo., [iv], 361; 575 pp.
First edition of Broussais’ treatise in which he lays out his doctrine of "physiological medicine." He believed that the basic aspect of living systems was excitability.
"An intrinsically inexplicable vital force involves animal proteins in a special vital chemistry, the most conspicuous product of which — and this is what distinguishes living from nonliving systems — is excitability, permitting the prompt adaptive responses of the (...)