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.

    18/86 (page 8)
    itself. Nor does tliis observation apply only to the excessive temperatures, such as 140°, 190°, and 220° F., which were used in the experiments of the English and French physiologists Avith the dry air stove ; it applies equally to atmospheres of much inferior degrees of heat. Dr Davy, for instance, ascer- tained that the internal temperature of the companions of his from England to Ceylon, rose gradually as warmer latitudes were gained ; and, arrived at their destination in the island, that it was from 2’7° to 3'6° F. higher than it had been in England. He had already ascertained that the tem- perature of the common sheep was from 1° to 2°, and even 3° F. higher in summer than in winter; and Dr Edwards subsequently discovered that the temperature of the house- sparrow rose and fell with the season. In the month of February the mean temperature of the house-sparrow was found to be 105° F.; in April it was 108°, and in July 111° F. There can be no question of this law being quite general. Man, in especial, is fashioned in harmony with the varying circumstances in which he is placed as the native or visitant of every spot upon the surface of the earth; and if he have the wonderful attribute of preserving his temperature nearly at the same degree of the thermometer under the equator, and in the icy regions bordering upon the Poles, this is cer- tainly in virtue of something else than the greater or less activity of the exhaling function of the skin. The process by which heat is evolved in the animal body, as maintained by Black in the middle, and by Lavoisier towards the end of the last century, is now recognized not to differ from that by which it is generated in our stoves and furnaces. In these, with the freest access of air and abundance of fuel, there is a great evolution of heat; feebly blown, and scantily fed with combustible matter, there is little heat produced. In like manner the quantity of caloric evolved in the animal body is inseparably connected with the energy of the respiratory process, and the kind and quantity of the food that is consumed ; and matters are so