Chemistry, Meteorology and the Function of Digestion Considered with Reference to Natural Theology

This 1834 treatise by the physician and biochemist William Prout supports the idea of a divine designer.

William Prout (Author)

9781108000666, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

608 pages
21.6 x 14 x 3.4 cm, 0.76 kg

This book was the last of eight treatises from the 1830s that were commissioned by the Royal Society with advice from leading churchmen under the terms of a legacy from the Earl of Bridgewater. They aimed to support the idea that the natural world was made by a divine designer. William Prout, a respected physician and biochemist who specialised in nutrition and urology, argues in the introduction to this book that the biological adaptation seen in nature is divinely planned as a means to an end. His text covers chemistry, geology, the ocean, the planets, and processes of the human body. Remembered today for his discovery of hydrochloric acid in the gastric juices of animals, here Prout is on the front line in the early battles between scientific method and religious belief, a debate which continues to this day.

Introduction
Part I. Of Chemistry: 1. Of the mutual operation of physical agents and of matter
2. Of the inertia and activity of matter
3. Of molecular or polarising forces
4. Of chemical elementary principles
Part II. Of Meteorology: 1. Of the general structure of the earth
2. Of heat and light
3. Of the temperature of the earth
4. Of the primary constituents of climate
5. Of the secondary or subsidiary constituents of climate
6. Of the adaptation of organised beings to climate
Part III. Of the Chemistry of Organisation: 1. Of the nature and composition of organised bodies in general
2. Of the modes of nutrition
Of the digestive process
4. Of the processes of assimilation
Appendix.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]