An elementary compendium of physiology : for the use of students / by F. Magendie ; translated from the French with copious notes, tables, and illustrations, by E. Milligan.

  • Magendie, François, 1783-1855. Précis élémentaire de physiologie. English
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An elementary compendium of physiology : for the use of students / by F. Magendie ; translated from the French with copious notes, tables, and illustrations, by E. Milligan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    bed.* In tliis respect it would be very proper that young children should not be confined too much in their swathing clothes, to pre- vent them from thus bending themselves. Our clothes preserve the heat of our bodies ; for the substances of which they are formed being bad conductors of caloric, they prevent that of the body from passing off.a According to what has been said, the combination of the oxygen of the air with the carbon of the blood is sufficient for the explana- tion of most of the phenomena presented by the production of ani- mal heat; but there are several which, if real, could not be ex- plained by this means. Authors worthy of credit have remarked, that, in certain local diseases, the temperature of the diseased place rises several degrees above that of the blood, taken at the left auricle. If this is so, the continual renewal of the arterial blood Secon is not sufficient to account for this increase of heat; but I doubtbeat, the accuracy of the fact. I have myself made some experiments, carefully followed up, on this subject, employing very sensible thermometers, and I have never seen the part inflamed have a heat above that of the blood. I have seen, for instance, a diseased hand 14-4 or 18° F. degrees-]' warmer than the sound hand ; but this pathological temperature was still below that of the blood : it was only from 98 to 100° F. At all events, according to the ex- periments of M. Despretz, in the most favourable circumstances, and in the herbivorous animals alone, respiration only furnished 89° out of 100 degrees of animal heat, and in the carnivorous only 80°. There exist then other sources of heat in the economy; it is probable that they are to be found in the frictions of the dif- ferent parts, in the motion of the blood, the rolling of its globules one upon another, and finally, in the nutritive phenomena. This second source of heat must belong to the nutritive pheno-second source mena which take place in the diseased part. There is nothing forced in this supposition: for most of the chemical combinations produce elevations of temperature, and it of animal heat. See a memoir of M. Bros on this subject, in the Journ. dc Med. 1817. t Of 18 to 22 degrees of Fahrenheit, if the degrees understood in the text are of Reaumur, as they probably are, from the context.—Tit.