ZOOLOGY. 353 



all parts of its body, while the dead one exhibited a temperature of 

 122 to 1253 externally, and of only 10?i in the rectum. Thus, 

 while the living animal dies long before an equilibrium can be estab- 

 lished, this is gradually effected in the dead one. Mammals always 

 died when exposed to a temperature of 113 or 115 ; birds at 118| ; 

 cold-blooded animals, when exposed to that of 176, died when their 

 own reached 104. In moist heated air death is far more rapid. 

 Effects of low temperature: While an elevation of the temperature 

 of animals is not borne beyond 8 or 10, it may be lowered to a far 

 greater extent. Dogs and rabbits, exposed to a freezing mixture, 

 their own temperature being 104, lost 5h in 10 minutes, ll a in 15 

 minutes, and 123 in 20 minutes. The general conclusions are, 1. 

 An animal placed in a temperature of from 32 to 40, during not more 

 than 5 minutes, undergoes a diminution that may lower it to two 

 thirds of its normal temperature. 2. This diminution continues after 

 removal from the cooling mixture. 3. Left to itself, it takes place, 

 until, having arrived at nearly half of the normal temperature, the ani- 

 mal dies; but if this point has not been attained, the application of 

 warmth may yet restore the normal temperature. Various experi- 

 ments show that even warm baths diminish internal heat, and if we 

 wish to produce the full effect, the person must not be dried or rubbed 

 too soon after leaving them, lest a premature reaction interfere with 

 the refrigerant effect. In the recovery of drowned persons, too, the 

 administration of w r arm fluids by the mouth or rectum is of the first 

 importance. Animals whose temperature varies from W0h to 112 

 become anesthetic when this is reduced to 75 or 77. Experiments 

 made since 1842, by covering the bodies of animals \vith gum, gelatine, 

 caoutchouc varnish, or other substances which dry rapidly, and do not 

 impede the respiratory movements, show that the animals so covered 

 die in from two to eight hours, the circulation having become almost 

 completely arrested in the large vessels. All these experiments de- 

 monstrate the intimate relation betw r een the functions of the skin and 

 the animal temperature. Z/ Union Medicate, 1850, Nos. 45, 46, 47. 



TEMPERATURE OF CHILDREN. 



ONE of the memoirs which received a prize in " medicine and sur- 

 gery " from the French Academy, was by M. Roger, on " the tem- 

 perature of children." In the investigation of this subject, the author 

 has made more than a thousand experiments. At the moment of birth 

 the temperature of the infant is 40 Centigrade, that is, equal to that 

 of the medium in which it lived ; but it soon decreases to 35. In 

 the following years it varies from 36 3 to 38. The typhoid fever is 

 the sickness in which the temperature is the highest, varying from 

 42. 5 to 41 ; in pneumonia it is 39 on an average, and in eruptive 

 fevers it varies with the periods of the disease. In meningites there are 

 the greatest differences of temperature, depending more upon the in- 

 dividuals than upon the severity of the disease. In only one disease, 

 the hardening of the cellular tissue, is there a very great decrease in 

 the temperature ; in nineteen children, the thermometer under the 



30* 



