Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/488

468 their organs and the organs of the human body. Mariotte insists that the medicinal properties of plants are to be ascertained by trying them on sick people.

Mariotte's letter, the most important parts of which have here been given, presents us with a lively picture of the views which prevailed in the second half of the 17th century respecting the life of plants; it shows at the same time how an eminent investigator of nature, adopting the principles of a more modern philosophy and knowing how to make a skilful use of the facts that were known to him, was led to oppose antiquated error, the result of prepossessions and want of reflection. If we combine the views of Malpighi on the internal economy of the plant, derived chiefly from its anatomy, with the chemical and physical disquisitions of Mariotte, we have an entirely new theory of the nutrition of plants, not only antagonistic to the Aristotelian doctrine, but distinguished from it by a much greater wealth of ideas and by more sagacious combinations.

These two men had in truth discovered all the principles of vegetable life and nutrition, which could have been discovered in the existing condition of phytotomy and chemistry; Mariotte especially had succeeded in applying the very best that was to be obtained from the uncertain chemical knowledge of his day to the explanation of the phenomena of vegetation. Chemistry was at that time beginning to set herself free from the notions of the medical science, the iatro-chemistry of a former age, only to throw herself into the arms of the theory of the phlogiston; and how little she could contribute to the explanation of the processes of nutrition in plants, how little the methods then in use were adapted to the examination of organised bodies, may be learnt from a little book published in 1676 and again in 1679, 'Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des plantes,' which appeared indeed in Dodart's name, but which was compiled and approved by the body of members of the Academy of Paris. It contains no results of investigation,