160 Specific Gravity of different parts of the Human Body. 



Transactions of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, 

 and are the most complete of the kind with which we are ac- 

 quainted. 



Dr Davy's experiments were performed much sooner after 

 death, and on a greater variety of bodies, than those of Dr 

 Frick, and are on the whole more suitable for the establishment 

 of the average natural result, as they were made principally on 

 soldiers, or adult males between the ages of 20 and 40; while 

 Dr Frick's experiments were performed on two males, one of 

 25, the other 6Q^ on a female of 79, and on a child dying at 

 birth. 



A considerable part of Dr Frick's essay is occupied with a 

 description of the kinds of balance he employed in weighing 

 the parts, the specific gravity of which was to be ascertained, 

 and with the construction of a formula for the reduction of the 

 resulting specific weights to one temperature, viz. 16° R. or 68" 

 F. 



Many of his experiments were made with the view of ascer- 

 taining whether there exists any difference in the specific gravity 

 of corresponding parts, taken from opposite sides of the same 

 body. The results show that some such difference does exist, 

 but they are by no means sufficiently constant to entitle us to 

 found upon them any general conclusion. 



We shall not at present follow the author through these de- 

 tails, but arrange in a Table, which we think may be interest- 

 ing to general readers, the more important results obtained by 

 Davy and Frick. In this Table, those results only which cor- 

 respond most nearly are stated, and many are omitted in which 

 the differences are such that they must be attributed to acciden- 

 tal circumstances, the consideration of which would be foreign 

 to the immediate and important object of the investigation. 



