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The vital principle or force which (according to the Paracelsians) presides over the growth and continuation of living beings; the anima mundi or plastic power of the old philosophers. [Obs.] Johnson.

"His arrowy tongue." Cowper. By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone. Byron. With arrowy vitalities, vivacities, and ingenuities. Carlyle.

artery), as a river, canal, or railroad. Arterial blood, blood which has been changed and vitalized (arterialized) during passage through the lungs.

Want or loss of strength; debility; diminution of the vital forces.

Characterized by atony, or want of vital energy; as, an atonic disease.

The action of the vital principle, or of the instinctive powers, toward the preservation of the individual; also, the vital principle. [In this sense, written also autocrasy.] Dunglison.

See Vital force.

Of or pertaining to biodynamics, or the doctrine of vital forces or energy.

The doctrine of vital forces or energy.

One of the smaller vital units of a cell, the bearer of vitality and heredity. See Pangen, in Supplement.

The physical phenomena of organized bodies, in opposition to their organic or vital phenomena.

Vital statistics.

ized substance of an animal, whether living or dead, as distinguished from the spirit, or vital principle; the physical person. Absent in body, but present in spirit. 1 Cor. v. 3 For of the soul the body form doth take. For soul is form, and doth the body make. Spenser.

e in the process of respiration; to respire. To view the light of heaven, and breathe the vital air. Dryden.

The agregate of all one's inherited physical qualities; the aggregate of the vital powers of an individual, with refernce to ability to endure hardship, resist disease, etc.; as, a robust constitution. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the oid world. Story.

To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp. If only the vital energy be not cribbed or cramped. I. Taylor. Now I am cabin'd, cribbed, confined. Shak.

Wanting in religious spirit and vitality; as, dead faith; dead works. "Dead in trespasses." Eph. ii. 1.

The cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants.

That condition of a tissue or an organ in which its vitality has become either diminished or perverted; a substitution of a lower for a higher form of structure; as, fatty degeneration of the liver.

To reduce by destroying or consuming the vital powers of; to exhaust, as a country of its strength or resources, a treasury of money, etc. Saturday Review.