A reply to a critique on Liebig's animal chemistry / by Lunsford P. Yandell.

  • Yandell, Lunsford P. (Lunsford Pitts), 1805-1878.
Date:
1843
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A reply to a critique on Liebig's animal chemistry / by Lunsford P. Yandell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    whose nerves are thus deranged, is nutrition carried on to its usual extent; and hence the organs decrease in size. Yet to chemical action does our author ascribe nutrition as well as calorification. p. 24, 25. Liebig holds calorification to be a chemical process, but one to which nervous influence is necessary. The nerves, once for all, he admits, are essential to all vital actions. Under their influence, the viscera produce the compounds- which give rise to animal heat by their union with oxygen. But these compounds are not evolved when the nerves are paralyzed, and the combustion must consequently cease. The nerves being indispensable to the supply of the fuel, it must happen when they are injured that the animal temperature will decline, for the conditions of the chemical action are no longer present. Fuel to be consumed, is as essential as oxy- gen to consume it, and the cutting of the spinal cord, or of the par vagum, effectually cuts off this supply. The author of the Critique and Liebig are at issue as to the relative temperature of the child and the adult, but here, as usual, the evidence is on the side of the German Professor. In infants, says Dr. C, the lungs are larger, in proportion to the bodies that contain them, than in adults. In the same pro- portion, therefore, they receive, by each inspiration, a larger quantity of atmospherical air. Their acts of inspiration are also more frequent, and therefore, more numerous in a given time, in the proportion of about 27 or 28 to 19 or 20. Hence, according to our author's hypothesis, the temperature of in- fants ought to be higher than that of adults. And the gen- tleman asserts that it is so. p. 26. Dr. John Davy, (Researches, p. 287, 1840), found the temperature of young animals higher than that of animals arrived at maturity. He cites, particularly, observations on infants made by himself. In one instance, he found the heat under the axilla of a child just born 98.5°: after twelve hours 99°, and after three days the same, appearing all the time in perfect health. On five other children of the same age, he made similar observations. In two instances, he says, when the infants were weak, the temperature, one hour after birth, was found not to exceed 96°, which is 2° below