First principles of medicine / [Archibald Billing].

  • Billing, Archibald, 1791-1881.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / [Archibald Billing]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ture which it is destined to inhabit for but a short space of time! Such perfection in our organisa- tion leads us to believe with Job, that, however disarranged by death and decomposition, it may again be called into re-union, and that “in our flesh we shall see God.” The animaL HEAT has been accounted for im different ways by several ingenious physiologists : from the aggregate of their opinions and experl- ments I deduce, that heat is extricated all over the frame ; in the capillaries, by the action of the nerves during the change of the blood from scarlet arterial to purple venous; and also whilst it is changing 7 the lungs from purple to scarlet. There is a perpetual deposition, by the capillary system, of new matter, and decomposition of the old, all over the frame, influenced by the nerves: in other words, the galvanoid or electroid influence of the nerves, which occasions these depositions and decompositions, keeps up a slow combustion. In this decomposition there is a continual dis- engagement of carbon, which mixes with the blood returning to the heart at the time it changes from scarlet to purple; this decomposition being effected by the agency of the nerves, produces con- stant extrication of caloric : again, in the lungs that carbon is thrown off and united with oxygen, during which caloric is again set free ; so that we have in the LUNGS a CHARCOAL FIRE constantly burning, and in the OTHER PARTS a WOOD FIRE, the one producing carbonic acid gas, the other carbon ; the food sup-