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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



loss of heat from the intestinal vessels. Many people are unable 

 to get to sleep when they are at all cold ; and Rosenthal has shown 

 that this attitude is commonly adopted by men, dogs, and other 

 animals when preparing to sleep, so as not only to maintain the 

 bodily temperature during sleep, but to allow the intestinal ves- 

 sels to dilate and accommodate a mass of blood which would 

 otherwise be driven into the cerebral circulation, stimulating it 

 to functional activity and keeping the person or animal awake. 



The attitude of the body may be altered permanently by occu- 

 pation or disease in such a way that one accustomed to pay atten- 

 tion to this subject can frequently make out, with a little trouble, 

 a good deal regarding the patient's history and illnesses. Thus, a 

 chronic cough has the effect of inflating the chest and rounding 

 the back, so that one might almost guess from the figure (15) that 

 the person so shaped was liable to chronic bronchitis. The more 

 tightly a bladder is blown up with air the more tense does it be- 



Fig 15. 



Fig. 16. 



come and the more does it take a circular form. In the same 

 way the more an alveolus of the lung is blown up by the efforts 

 of coughing the more does it resemble the inflated bladder. 

 What is true of a single alveolus is true of the chest as a whole. 

 It tends as nearly as possible to become globular, with a circular 

 outline not only in the transverse but in the longitudinal direc- 

 tion. The sternum and vertebrae prevent it from becoming com- 

 pletely globular, notwithstanding all efforts, and it thus assumes 

 the barrel shape so characteristic of emphysema, as being the 

 nearest possible approach to a globe. In going through a hos- 

 pital ward one sees here and there j)atients who are constantly 

 sitting up in bed and do not lie down at all ; these are for the 

 most part people who have great difficulty of breathing. The 

 reason for this position has no doubt been often given, but I do 

 not recollect coming across it in print and I can not say whether 



