In science, vitalism was theory, common at the turn of the 19th century, which supposed that there was a hypothetical type of vital energy innate in living structures. [1]

Thermodynamics
The formation of the Helmholtz school of thermodynamics, beginning in circa 1838, originated in a 1842 pact between three medical students Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, and Hermann Helmholtz who vowed to overthrow their mentor German physiologist Johannes Müller’s theory of vitalism.

References
1. Hunter, Graeme K. (2000). Vital Forces: the Discovery of the Molecular Basis of Life (keyword: vitalism, pgs. 54, 59, 65, 155). Academic Press.

External links
● Vitalism – Wikipedia.