60 British Association for the Advancement of Science. 
to cold air. It may be proved that the respired air, being of nearly 
the same tempevature as the blood, and not deriving its heat from 
the action of respiration in the lung (see Brodie’s Experiments), 
must, in its passage downwards, be heated to considerably more 
than half the difference between the temperature of the blood and 
that of the air; that, consequently, at its arrival in the air-vesicles 
of the lungs, it must have acquired such a temperature as amounts 
to a protection against the effects of cold. Dr. Osborne considers 
this as a provision of nature in a matter in which we are not able 
to guard ourselves. 
When, owing to an oppression of nervous energy, the healthy 
temperature of the surface is not maintained, then the air arrives at 
the air-vesicles without being heated; hence, he conceives, may be 
explained the numerous instances of sudden death which oceur in 
chronic bronchitis and low fevers when sudden depressions of the 
temperature of the atmosphere have taken place during the night. 
In those cases the cold thus admitted to the lungs causes a torpor in 
their capillary circulation ; and after death it is found that the blood 
has stagnated in the lungs, and in the veins and right cavities of the 
heart. 
The common opinion that various inflammatory diseases are con- 
tracted by sleeping in newly-built houses appears to be ill founded, 
except in as far as the clothes worn by the individual may contract 
moisture. The air under the bedelcthes being kept up by the heat 
of the body to the temperature 80°, the only way in which the damp 
air can prove injurious is by the lungs, which, as before stated, are, 
in health, enabled to resist its effects. It appears that in a regiment 
which was quartered in newly-built barracks no injury resulted from 
the damp. 
On the stomach the effect of cold is perceived, not by a sensation 
of cold in that organ, but by thirst, in consequence of reaction, a& 
is experienced after taking ices. When the cold is long-continued 
or overpowering, in consequence of feeble reaction, then gastritis is 
produced from torpor of the capillaries. This last mode of expla- 
nation is derived from the phenomena observed in the exterior of the 
body on the application of cold. When the application is transient and 
the circulation vigorous, the contraction of the vessels and paleness 
of the surface are only momentary, and are succeeded by reaction 
evinced in increased heat and diffused blush of redness. When it is 
long continued, then the pale and shrunk state of the surface is gra- 
dually succeeded by a purple or livid colour, attended with increase 
of size, as may be proved by a ring on the finger, from the swollen 
state of the vessels. Comparing these facts with the experiments de- 
tailed by Dr. Alison,—which showed that in inflamed parts not only 
the small vessels but the large arterial trunks leading to the part are 
dilated, and veadered incapable of contracting like other arteries,— 
Dr. Osborne proposes the question, whether there is not sufficient 
evidence to prove that cold produces inflammation by producing 
torpor and dilatation of the vessels, either of the part itself or of 
some connected or adjacent part, which, if not removed by transient 
