Inaugural dissertation on the nature of respiration, and the extent of its connection with the nervous system : sumitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules for graduation, by authority of the Very Rev. Principal Baird, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by George A.F. Wilks.

  • Wilks, George Augustus Frederick.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural dissertation on the nature of respiration, and the extent of its connection with the nervous system : sumitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules for graduation, by authority of the Very Rev. Principal Baird, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by George A.F. Wilks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    solid, and less of the watery particles. Birds are likewise enabled, by the great perfection of their respiratory appa- ratus, to maintain the temperature of their bodies under a great reduction of the warmth of the external air. In order to accomplish this, their respiratory movements are much accelerated, amounting in some experiments to 120 in a minute.* But if the vital energies are more active, the tenacity of life is very far inferior to that of reptiles and fishes. Birds are (with some exceptions) generally short-lived, and in them any check to their natural functions proves rapidly fatal. Even their endurance of cold is very limited, and in a vitiated atmosphere, as already stated, they very speedily die. Hence we find, that nature has distributed her advantages more equally than would at first appear. The seemingly inferior degree of enjoyment, experienced by reptiles and fishes, is compensated by the greater length to which their existence is commonly prolonged; whilst the pleasures of the aerial choristers, however exquisite in kind, are fleeting and transient in duration. Of the Mechanism of Res'piration in Birds. The most striking characteristic by which the respira- tory apparatus in birds is distinguished from that of other vertebrata, whose respiration is pulmonary, consists in the passage which it affords for the penetration of the elastic fluid, not only among the ramifications of the pulmonary artery, but likewise among those of the aorta, in all parts of the body. For this purpose, the lungs are not, as in the other classes, unattached to the parietes of the chest, but fixed firmly to the ribs, and covered by a membrane full of apertures, through which the air is transmitted into • Edwards, Infl, des Ag. Phys.