CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 215 



Prof. Dowler objects to the nutritive theory of heat, that cold- 

 blooded animals are often voracious eaters, and also that the temper- 

 ature of starving animals may be accelerated rather than diminished. 

 This is not altogether a new idea; the article Abstinence, of the Na- 

 tional Cyclopcedia (London, 1847), enumerates the caloric manifes- 

 tations of the economy during starvation, as follows : " During the 

 first two or three days the temperature is natural, subequently the 

 heat seldom sinks below the natural standard ; finally, the skin be- 

 comes intensely hot delirium, coma, etc." This is not in accord- 

 ance with the statement of Dr. Draper, who says, " A starving ani- 

 mal dies of cold ; " or that of Carpenter, who says, " Death by star- 

 vation is really death by cold" M. Savigna was once shipwrecked ; 

 many of his companions died of starvation, and he barely escaped the 

 same terrible death. He says, and he speaks knowingly, that " star- 

 vation is accompanied with a burning heat." 



In conclusion, we quote a few passages that show Prof. Dowler's 

 views upon the subject of animal heat : " Calorification, like con- 

 sciousness, understanding, will, vitality, matter, and mind, is an origi- 

 nal endowment, inherent in man's constitution, the immediate cause 

 of which is no more explicable by chemistry than man's color, size, 

 altitude, etc." . . . . " Vitalism (the vis vitce), or vitality, is 

 self-revealed, self-evident, and no more demonstrable by experiment, 

 testimony, or reasoning, than consciousness, mind, matter, space, 

 duration. If physiology can claim any vital element or principle, 

 the generation, with the maintenance, of animal heat, takes prece- 

 dence. Am. Med. Monthly. 



APPARATUS FOR RESPIRATION AND PERSPIRATION IN THE 

 PHYSIOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF MUNICH. 



Many methods have been used for determining the quantity of car- 

 bonic acid and water excreted by the skin and the lungs ; and most 

 interesting results have been obtained by the application of the con- 

 trivances constructed by Messrs. Scharling, Yicrodt, Valentin and 

 Brummer, Regnault and Reiset, Edward Smith, and others, with 

 which every physiologist and chemist is acquainted. There were, 

 however, two objections to be made to all the methods hitherto used 

 for researches on man and animals, viz., that their degree of accuracy 

 could not be ascertained by cross-experiments with known quantities 

 of carbonic acid, and that man and animals were compelled to res- 

 pire during the experiments under more or less unusual, troublesome, 

 and therefore unnatural, conditions. Professor Pettenkofer' has for 

 years directed his attention to this subject, and has endeavored to as- 

 certain how we might accurately determine the quantity of carbonic 

 acid given off by a man breathing and moving freely in the fresh 

 air, without the intermedium of any apparatus whatever. The re- 

 searches of Messrs. Bischoff and Voit on the nutrition of carnivora 

 have shown that the carbonic acid which escapes through the skin 

 and the lungs cannot be correctly calculated from the difference of 

 carbon between the ingested food and the ejected urine and faces, 

 regard being had to the weight of the body ; because two unknown 

 substances (carbonic acid and water) escape at the same time, and in 



