The Physiology of Common Life by Lewes, George Henry - 1867

New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1867. First American edition (later printing).

1867 ILLUSTRATED HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY FOR THE LAYPERSON BY TALENTED SELF-TAUGHT PHILOSOPHER-SCIENTIST AND ROMANTIC PARTNER OF GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS).

Two hardcover volumes, 7 ½ inches tall, pebbled salmon cloth binding, blindstamped rules, gilt title to spines, each volume signed in pencil, "CW Gaylord 3/1872". Vol. I: xii, 368 pp, 4 pp publisher's ads; Vol. II: 410 pp, 10 pp publisher's ads. Wood engravings. Sunning to spines, small tear in fore edge of front free endpaper and a few marginal penciled notes in Vol. I; bindings tight, pages crisp and clean, very good minus in custom archival mylar covers. CONTENTS: HUNGER AND THIRST, FOOD AND DRINK, DIGESTION AND INDIGESTION, THE STRUCTURE AND USES OF OUR BLOOD, CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD; ITS HISTORY, COURSE, AND CAUSES, RESPIRATION AND SUFFOCATION, WHY WE ARE WARM, AND HOW WE KEEP SO, FEELING AND THINKING, THE MIND AND THE BRAIN, OUR SENSES AND SENSATIONS, SLEEP AND DREAMS, THE QUALITIES WE INHERIT FROM OUR PARENTS, LIFE AND DEATH.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES (1817 -1878) was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He was also an amateur physiologist. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious skepticism. However, he is perhaps best known today for having openly lived with Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot, as soulmates whose lives and writings were enriched by their relationship, though they never married each other. Having abandoned successively a commercial and a medical career, he seriously thought of becoming an actor and appeared several times on stage between 1841 and 1850. Finally he devoted himself to literature, science and philosophy. Lewes undertook studies on nutrition and physiology; he explored the question whether sugar was injurious to teeth. He conducted experiments on the reflexes and the nervous system of living animals, especially frogs, using ether and chloroform out of consideration for their pain. From about 1853 Lewes's writings show that he was occupying himself with scientific and more particularly biological work. He always showed a distinctly scientific bent in his writings, though he had not had technical training. More than popular expositions of accepted scientific truths, they contain able criticisms of conventionally accepted ideas and embody the results of individual research and individual reflection. He made several suggestions, some of which have since been accepted by physiologists, of which the most valuable is that now known as the doctrine of the functional indifference of the nerves - that what were known as the specific energies of the optic, auditory and other nerves are simply differences in their mode of action due to the differences of the peripheral structures or sense-organs with which they are connected.