An experimental inquiry into the laws of the vital functions : with some observations on the nature and treatment of internal diseases / by A.P. Wilson Philip ... ; in part re-published, by permission of the president of the Royal Society, from the Philosophical Transactions of 1815 & 1817, with the report of the National Institute of France on the experiments of M. Le Gallois.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An experimental inquiry into the laws of the vital functions : with some observations on the nature and treatment of internal diseases / by A.P. Wilson Philip ... ; in part re-published, by permission of the president of the Royal Society, from the Philosophical Transactions of 1815 & 1817, with the report of the National Institute of France on the experiments of M. Le Gallois. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    activity; but that the organs of voluntary mo- tion, on the contrary, require repose, because the brain acts only by intervals.* This dis- tinction of Willis was very generally admitted till the middle of the last century. It was chiefly with a view to it that* the division of the eighth pair of nerves, from which it was main- tained that almost all the nerves of the heart proceed, was performed in different countries. The object was to prove that it is from the cerebellum that the heart derives all its power, and it was alledged that the animal died in this experiment, in consequence of the communica- tion between these organs being interrupted.— But, besides that it dies too slowly to permit us to ascribe its death to this cause, it has been proved in later times by several Philosophers, and particularly by M. le Gallois, in a memoir which the Class ordered to be inserted in the transactions of learned correspondents, that death here proceeds from quite a different cause. It has sometimes happened, indeed, that animals have died almost suddenly after the division of the nerves in question, and the partizans of Willis have not failed to lay much stress on this circumstance, of which their ad- versaries could give no satisfactory explanation. * Tho. Willis opera omnia, edente Ger. Balsio Amstelo-