On the function of respiration, in health and in disease, and more especially in cholera, typhus, &c. Also, on the formation of atmospheric air / By Richard Saumarez.

  • Richard Saumarez
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the function of respiration, in health and in disease, and more especially in cholera, typhus, &c. Also, on the formation of atmospheric air / By Richard Saumarez. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion of life, it is incessantly losing it, and verging from a living to a dying state. This important fact was satisfacto¬ rily ascertained, by a series of experiments made on pigs: —a number of these animals had a quantity of madder (a vegetable substance which manufacturers employ, to dye their stuffs of a red colour) mixed up with their food ; se¬ veral of these animals were killed at distant intervals from each other, and it was found that not only the soft but the hard parts, such as cartilages and bones, were completely changed into a red colour ; the madder was then disconti¬ nued :—in the remaining pigs, which were killed in succes¬ sion, the red particles had gradually disappeared, and in the course of seven years the whole of the madder had been absorbed, and all the parts had resumed their natural ap¬ pearance. In order to prevent the evils which the retention of these dead particles within the system would necessarily produce, a set of vessels exist, called lymphatic absorbent vessels, Avhose design and end is to absorb these dead parti¬ cles, and to remove them from the part in which the change has taken place. These vessels arise with open mouths, from every part of the system, and may be considered to resemble in their ac¬ tion the suction of blood by a leech : they are smaller, in infancy and youth, than at the periods of manhood and of old age, and their action stronger in atonic and putrid dis¬ eases than in inflammatory, and more especially than in a state of health and of strength : they discharge the dead matter which they have absorbed, partly into the neigh¬ bouring veins, but more especially through the medium of the thoracic duct and left subclavian vein, to the right side of the heart, from whence it is conveyed to the lungs by the agency of the pulmonary artery. The pulmonary ar¬ tery has two modes of termination, one of these is in innu¬ merable continuous veins, which, uniting together, convey their contents to the left side of the heart; the other ter-
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