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Dr. Carson read a paper on "Vital Temperature." He 

 observed that the discovery of a means of accurately estimat- 

 ing the temperature of bodies, by the thermometer, was shortly 

 followed by a division of animals into two great classes ;— 

 the first, in which the animals in ordinary temperatures 

 possess the power of maintaining their heat at or near a 

 point considerably above that of the medium in which they 

 exist ; the second, in which the temperature of the animals 

 included in it varies little from that of the atmosphere or 

 water of which they are denizens. It was only at a com- 

 paratively recent period, however, that accurate and extended 

 observations on the temperatures of the animals included in 

 these classes were made, in the warm-blooded animals, 

 and in the different parts of their bodies, by Davy, Becquerel, 

 and Breschet ; and in one class of the cold-blooded animals, 

 Insecta, by Newport. In Dr. Edward's work on the Influ- 

 ences of Physical Agents upon Life, he has examined, with 

 great care, the physiological circumstances under which 

 heat is developed in animals ; and, subsequently, with the 

 advantage of further observations of his own, and of those 

 to which I have alluded, he has published in the Cyclopaedia 

 of Pbysiology a paper on the subject of Animal Heat, the 

 views contained in which, with some remarks upon them, 

 form the subject of the present paper. The theories of the 

 sources of heat, from the alteration of the condition of 

 bodies, either by chemical combinations or physical influ- 

 ences, which occupied the attention of philosophers at the 

 latter part of the last century, were early applied to the 

 solution of the problem of the sources of the temperature in 

 warm-blooded animals ; and in nothing did the chemists of 

 that day triumph more than in the applicability of their 

 new views to the solution of these hitherto unexplained 

 phenomena. In a continuation of the present paper, which 

 I hope to have the honour of laying before the society, I 

 shall review these theories, and attempt to shew how far 



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