On the function of respiration, in health and in disease, and more especially in cholera, typhus, &c. : also, on the formation of atmospheric air / by Richard Saumarez.

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the function of respiration, in health and in disease, and more especially in cholera, typhus, &c. : also, on the formation of atmospheric air / by Richard Saumarez. 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.

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    initiation, in like manner, consists of numberless branches, which terminate, with open extremities, on the inner surface of the lungs, and exhale out of them the dead matter which had been deposited into them from the blood. It takes place at every pulsation of the heart, that is, sixty times in a minute, or once in every second of time : the quantity of dead matter which is accumulated in the air tubes, during four pulsations, is sufficiently great to create uneasiness, and cause the muscles of inspiration to contract; the cavity of the chest becomes thereby enlarged, and an unresisting medium within it is formed, which enables the air without, by its expansive force, to enter the mouth and windpipe, and to fill the cavities or cells into which this dead matter had been deposited. I am therefore led, in the next place, briefly to describe how this dead matter is expelled from the lungs by the agency of the inspired air. The atmospheric air which is inspired, consists of two distinct gases, which are separable from each other by che- mical means ; in one hundred parts, seventy-nine parts consist of nitrogen and twenty-one of oxygen. In the or- dinary state of health, the quantity of air which is admitted into the lungs during every inspiration^ amounts from 14 to 17 cubic inches. It takes place fetr times in a minute, when the pulse is 60 ; so that one respiration is necessary to take up the quantity of carbon which had been depo- sited during four circulations ; although circulation and inspiration are not synchronous, they are consentaneous. Whilst the air remains in the lungs, it is ascertained that the nitrogen has undergone no diminution in quantity nor alteration in quality. With the oxygen, it is far other- wise ; instead of twenty-one parts preserving their identity, twelve and one-fifth only remain; nearly eight parts are found to have had their character entirely changed, and to have formed what is vulgarly called carbonic acid gas. The change which the oxygen has undergone—the new gas