...medical profession. ' It is a fundamental law of the 45 distribution of vital powers,' says Bichat, ' that when they are increased in one part, they are...that the sum is never augmented, but that they are necessarily transported from one organ to another, and therefore to increase the powers of one organ,...

...decreed, wrote Bichat, that where was "a determinate sum offorces or powers" so that when "[the powers] are increased in one part they are diminished in all the rest of the living economy.'"20 The single exception to the principle of limited energy was the "genius," a category Bichat...