On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis.

  • Willis, Robert, 1799-1878.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    15/86 (page 5)
    have been verified, and the views of the English inquirers thereby considerably modified. Farther, the subjects of every one of the experiments of Dr Dobson,* of Liverpool, the next inquirer into the effects of a heated atmosphere, were found in every instance to have had their temjierature raised above the standard. This was most remarkably the case in the sub- ject of his third experiment, a young and rather delicate lad, who after an exposure of no more .than ten minutes in the stove heated to 220° F., had his internal temperature raised from 98° to 102° P. These facts, which present themselves to me in so im- portant a light, were made nothing of by the immediate observers, and have been, as it seems, all but persistently ignored by physiologists to the present time. This re- sult is probably in no inconsiderable measure due to the series of experiments undertaken at a subsequent period by Drs Fordyce and Blagden, associated on this occasion with the Hon. Mr Phipps, Dr Solander, and Mr (Sir Joseph) Banks. Besides finding ^11 their former inferences borne out, as they believed, by the new facts observed, they now arrived at the rather extraordinary conclusion: that the human body had not only a wonderful faculty of resisting great degrees of heat, but had farther an inherent power of engendering cold: a conclusion apparently come to on the strength of the fact that Avhen the five individuals mentioned went together into a cham- ber, which we must presume not to have been of very large dimensions, heated to 198° F., the temperature fell rapidly to 110° F. Had five dead bodies instead of five living men been introduced into the chamber, the effect would undoubtedly have been the same in kind, though it may be not quite the same in degree. The interesting and more recent researches of Messrs Dela- roche and Berger,f which are frequently quoted as favouring * Philosophical Transactions, 1775. Part 2. t Experiences sur Ics effets qn’une forte chaleur produit sur 1’ccononiie ani- malc.—Theses de Paris, 1806, No. 11. Journal de Physique, tom. 63, 71, 77. •