Carbonic acid in medicine / by Achilles Rose, M.D. ; with the portraits of van Helmont, Priestley and Lavoisier.

  • Achilles Rose
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Carbonic acid in medicine / by Achilles Rose, M.D. ; with the portraits of van Helmont, Priestley and Lavoisier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    cing reasons for abandoning the generally adopt- ed view/according to which the carbonic-acid gas coming from the blood enters the lungs simply by the law of diffusion. There is a con- siderable difference of pressure in regard to the oxygen in the blood and the oxygen in the tis- sues, and, owing to this difference of pressure, the tissues are supplied with the necessary amount of oxygen. Quite the opposite is the case with carbonic acid; the tension is higher in the tissues than in the blood, and all the in- vestigations thus far made have produced no evidence against the assumption that carbonic acid from the tissues enters the blood simply by the laws of diffusion. Considering even superficially the quantities of oxygen in the blood, it appears at once plain enough that the main amount can not have been absorbed physically; for the serum of the blood, as a solution of different substances, ab- sorbs less oxygen than pure water. It can absorb hardly 0.3 volume per cent, of oxygen from the atmospheric air at the ordinary tem- perature of the body. In reality, however, 2 [17]