296 Broughton o;i the Influence 



young animals than in adults, and that this opening varies in 

 its dimensioas in different kinds of animals compared with each 

 other. The affection of the heart he found more difficult to 

 determine, but he seems to think that the dyspnoea and the 

 want of fullness in the arteries, from the imperfect oxygenation 

 of the blood checking the circulation, is altogether sufficient 

 to account for the heart's action after the division of the eighth 

 pair of nerves. The affection of the lungs he refers to the se- 

 vere dyspnoea occasioned by the paralysis of the larynx. He 

 found them always in a state of greater or less congestion, and 

 the bronchice full of fluids 



The state of the stomach, he observed, varied in its appear- 

 ance in different animals, and even in the same species of ani- 

 mals ; but, he did not generally notice any indication of the di- 

 gestive process being arrested. Whatever might be the state of 

 the stomach, he attributes it altogether to the disturbance of 

 the functions of the respiratory organs. Le Gallois appears sa- 

 tisfied as to the immediate cause of death being entirely re- 

 ferable to the lungsy through which the circulation becomes 

 stopped in three ways — 1. By the diminution in the opening of 

 the glottis, — 2. By the congestion in the lungs. — 3. By the extra- 

 vasation of fluid into the bronchiae ; and that these effects vary 

 according to the age, size, and species of the animal. Of thirty- 

 one rabbits operated upon from one to forty days old, they died 

 between six and eighteen hours and an half. 



Majendie, in his elements of physiology, treating of respi- 

 ration, remarks, that as the eighth pair are the only cerebral 

 nerves which supply the substance of the lungs, many physio- 

 logists have been induced to divide them, and that this opera- 

 tion was frequent amongst the ancient physicians, but much less 

 so with the moderns. And, in all cases, he says, the animals 

 have not survived more than three or four days, and that this 

 death has been attributed by different authors to a cessation of 

 the heart's motion, a deficient digestion, inflammation of the 

 lungs, and so on, as already noticed. He cites the experiments 

 of his countrymen, and especially notices the loss of voice by 

 the division of the recurvent nerve, and the same consequence 



