On the dependence of animal motion on the law of gravity / by Henry Wiglesworth.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the dependence of animal motion on the law of gravity / by Henry Wiglesworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ]95 comes into operation, and under it they seek an outlet for their load of excretion. Hence the red globules are true carriers of their con- tents; and in the body, as out of the body, require to go through similar processes of emptying and filling. Each cell may be compared to a little membranous boat, sailing through the liquor sanguinis, unlading carbonic acid and lading oxygen in the lungs ; and the converse, viz., lading carbonic acid, and unlading oxygen in the tissues. VIII. We now pass to the mode in which the white corpuscle receives, and parts with, the materials which it carries. The facts, which we have just examined, are calculated to throw considerable doubt upon the generally received opinion, that they lose their contents by rupture or deliquescence ; they would rather lead us to expect some analogy between their action and the red corpuscles. But this analogy cannot be complete; the latter globules undergo no change in size during their action, because they receive the same volume of carbonic acid, for the same volume of oxygen, and vice versd; but as there is no reason to believe that the white corpuscles receive anything in exchange, they must diminish in size, when they part with their contents, and lost their character of globules. We have then to inquire, not only into the mode in wiiich this emptying of the white corpuscle is effected, and by what it is determined, but also to look for some mechanism by which