328 Memoir on aeriform cutaneous Perspiration, 



If I intended to consider the influence of the air under 

 every point of view, I should begin with respiration ; a func- 

 tion of so much importance, that without it hfe could not 

 exist, while it alone can for some time maintain and pre^ 

 serve it. 



But the modern chemists, after an exact analysis of atiTio- 

 spheric air, have given a theorv of respiration so ingenious, 

 so complete, and so well founded on correct experiments,, 

 that ail the attempts hitherto made to overturn it have only 

 tended to establish it more and more. 



I could therefore onlv repeat here what has been said be- 

 fore me by Lavoisier, Seo;uin, Crawford, Fourcroy, Chap- 

 tal, &c. ; and this matterlias been so well elucidated by the 

 laliours of these celebraicd chemists, that it is in some mea-. 

 sure exhausted ; and their theory in this respect has been sq 

 widely ditiused, that it is now adopted by all men of science. 

 I shall therefore abstain from repeating w hat w ould be here 

 tiresome and superfluous. 



But if what takes place in the lungs is exactly known, 

 the same light has not yet been thrown on the functions of 

 the skin. Indepeudcnlly of cutaneous perspiration, observed 

 with so much care and correctness by Sanctorius and several 

 others, does there escape through tlie skin one or more aeri- 

 form fluids ? and, in this case, of what nature arc they ? 

 Such are the two questions which I purpose to examine in. 

 this memoir. 



The anticnts had no idea of this aeriform cutaneous per- 

 spiration, and they make no mention of it in their works. 



Count de JMilly first announced, in 1777, the discovery 

 of an elastic tluid * which escapes through the skin. He 

 asserts that a person in a w arm bath may collect half a pint; 

 of it in the course of three hours ; and it results from hi^ 

 analysis, which indeed is very imperfect and incorrect, that 

 it is fixed air (carbonic acid gas). 



Dr. Ingenhousi; announced some time after that an aeri- 

 form fluid escapes through the skin j but he believed it to be 

 phlogisticated air (azotic gas,) 



Dr, Priestley and M. Montana repeated the experiments of 

 the two preceding philosophers, and observed no aeriform 

 emanation through the skm. 



M. Jurine, a surgeon at Geneva, being desirous to be- 

 come a (.'andidate l(7r the prize proposed by the Royal So- 

 . ciety of Medicine f, repealed the experiments of Milly and 



■* Mem. del'Acad. Royule des Scienc.s de Berlin, ann. 1777, p. 32. 

 i: Slc Hib^oirc et Memyues dt la Sociac dt; rvl'.dccint, toni.x. \). 54. 



Ingenhcusz, 



