Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm, as a remedy in fever, and febrile diseases; whether applied to the surface of the body, or used as a drink: with observations on the nature of fever; and on the effects of opium, alcohol, and inanition / by James Currie.

Date:
1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm, as a remedy in fever, and febrile diseases; whether applied to the surface of the body, or used as a drink: with observations on the nature of fever; and on the effects of opium, alcohol, and inanition / by James Currie. 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.

    199/328 (page 175)
    Some phyfiologifts of our own country, and on the continent, have of late fuppofed, that a fimilar procefs is carried on by the furface of the body, through which alfo, though in an inferior degree, the oxygen of the atmofphere is inhaled. Ex- periments are wanting to eftablifli this pclition, or to fhew us how far it extends, and there is reafon to believe that the principal fun&ion of the fkin, in the breathing animals at lead, is of a different and oppofite nature. That an animal polfeffes to a cer- tain extent, the faculty of rendering fenfible heat latent, or to fpeak more philofophically, of refolv- ing heat into caloric, in cafes in which the ftimulus of heat might otherwife overpower the living energy, compounds; a part unites with the iron of the blood, and forms it into an oxyd; apart with the hydrogen of the ve- nous blood, and forms water ; another part with the carbon of this blood, and forms carbonic acid gas. In the two firft cafes the language in the text applies Briefly, but in the laft cafe the heat extricated does not arife from the oxygen be- coming concrete, but from its entering into the compofition of a gas which has a lefs capacity for caloric than itfelf. The heat difengaged in thefe different procefles, unites with the blood, which in lofing its hydrogen and carbon (hydro-car- carbonat) is converted from venous to arterial, and has its ca- pacity for caloric increafed. Thus inflammation in the lungs is prevented. But the arterial blood, in the courfe of circu- lation, again abforbs by little and little a portion of hydro- carbonat, parting with caloric in the fame proportion. Hence the uniformity of temperature throughout the body. This feems the modern theory of refpiration, which it muft be £onfefled is not without its difficulties.