Practical observations on the use of oxygen, or vital air, in the cure of diseases : to which are added, a few experiments on the vegetation of plants / by Daniel Hill.

Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on the use of oxygen, or vital air, in the cure of diseases : to which are added, a few experiments on the vegetation of plants / by Daniel Hill. 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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    examine the mosaic account of the creation, as thus philosophically explained, and compare it’s great outline with modern discoveries in dicmistry relative to light, heat, and air, as iigents co- o^xjrating to the support of the animal aiui vegc. table nofld, will assuredly aduure ttic united sub most toUd and fiitd state; so at to form a most solid part, and wen the grtelfst part of tliC tubsum.^ of almost every thing existing on earth. And, moreover, that il is even the very mans ^ionsvlidatifij' and binding the oilur component parts together. ‘ Dr. Stephen Hales was one of the first who began to ex- amine and to consider rightly llit nature and properties of air. And he soon discovered, by means of a very simple plain experiment *, that, in cotiser]uence of treatkiag, a great quantity of air, in its passage to and from the lungs, it much altered in its naiure, and reduced from an elastic, to a fixed state. He discovered also, further, that plants imbibe vast quantities of air ; not only from tire earth beneath, through their roots; but also from the atmosphere itself, through the surface of their trunks, and leaves f : aad more especi- ally at night. And that it freely enters the vessels of trees, in very great abunduare, and is even (as he expresses it |) wrought into their ivbttuuce. ‘ And at last also, he even found reason to conclude, in the most satisfactory manner, that air alone makes a very considerable part of the tolid tubilanee Uith of vegetables, and of plants of aH kinds ; and of animals And that there is even much more of il in their solid and most nxed parts, lb*m io their floui parts )|. • ♦ Si»t«aJEiMyvV*).« p. StS. t Ibid. V*.l, I. p. IM. 3«6. JllOd. Vol. II- p- *67^- 5 Vegetable Sutkr, Vol. L p. tl4>. | Ibvd. Y**k !• }a 3QI. 311, sud Yoi. 11. j>. m.’