ABSTRACT
Jean Senebier played a significant part in the advent of general physiology, which was later to frame up stepwise. This is made evident from a survey of the program of analytic means and goals that Senebier put forward for plant physiology. Thus he aimed at determining the laws that regulate physical-chemical exchanges throughout the manifold of vegetal organizations. Similar objectives prevailed in his attempt at theoretically expanding Spallanzani’s achievements in animal physiology. In sum, he conceived of physiology as a general discipline that should focus on the elementary properties and operations of organized beings interacting with various factors of their external environment. Based on observation and experiment, it should reach up to general laws of organic processes applying across the various forms of vital organization.
