Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An essay on respiration. Pts I-II / By John Bostock, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![• city of the lungs after drowning, with their capa- city in a ftate of health, and thus to difcover the diminution which the cavity of the thorax experi- ences in a ftate of complete expiration. He con- ducted his experiments by applying a ligature about the trachea of an animal which he had previoufly drowned, he then detached the lungs from the body, and prefled out all the air into an inverted jar of water. He afterwards inflated the lungs, and noted the quantity of air they were capable of receiving when fully diftended ; thefe two quantities he compared together (a). The refults of his experiments were very different from what might previoufly have been expected ; the lungs of a cat, which when inflated were capable of holding 16 drachms of air, after drowning, were found to contain only half a drachm ; and in a dog, which he killed by hang- ing, the proportions were ftill more extraordi- nary, nearly as forty-three to one. We have no reafon to doubt either the faithfulnefs with which thefe experiments are related, or the accuracy with which they were performed, yet, as the Jungs always exactly fill the cavity of the] thorax, they cannot be reduced in capacity without a proportionable reduction in the fize of the cavity containing (a) p. Ql. & seq.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2129916x_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
