An inaugural dissertation on the production of animal heat : read and defended at a public examination, held by the medical professors, before the Rev. Joseph Willard, S.T.D. L.L.D. president, and the governors of Harvard College, for the degree of Bachelor in Medicine, July 10, 1797 / by Lyman Spalding.

  • Spalding, Lyman, 1775-1821.
Date:
Jun. 1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on the production of animal heat : read and defended at a public examination, held by the medical professors, before the Rev. Joseph Willard, S.T.D. L.L.D. president, and the governors of Harvard College, for the degree of Bachelor in Medicine, July 10, 1797 / by Lyman Spalding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    [ * ] Heuaclitus maintained that fire was the vivifying principle of all bodies, both animal and vegetable. The ingenious Dr. Brown has added that their exiftence, growth and maturation depend on fomething, which a£ls from without, and this a ftimulus. Living animals and vegetables have, be- fides the common properties of matter, a pe- culiar fomething, which diftinguifhes them from dead ones ; in thefe we fee all the folids and fluids too : what then is lacking ? A gen- tle ofcillation, or motion of the fluids, a cir- cumgiration of the liquors, which is produced and continued through life by a certain forne- thinn, abforbed from the air. Our ingenious profefTor, in a Difcourfo on the Principles of Vitality, obferves, it is a portion of that fubtle electric fluid, which nils the immenfe fpace of the whole univerfe, pervades all bodies, and actuates every particle cf matter. By it the phenomena of rnagnet- ifm, fire, and light are produced ; and on it the