upon Animal Bodies. & 



Dr. Waterhouse, in his Discourse delivered before 

 the Humane Society*, observes, that " after parturition, 

 the child opens its mouth to cry, and down rushes the 

 air." As the Doctor cannot here mean, that the nas- 

 cent infant had as yet acquired any knowledge of the 

 evils which induce it to gape for vital air, the opening of 

 the mouth is an involuntary action, excited by the im- 

 mediate stimulus of the air on the irritable and exposed 

 surface of the child, for, as the midwife well knows, cry- 

 ing is often excited the instant the chest is free, and the 

 same effect would follow, were the infant directly to be 

 plunged into water either above or below its tempera- 

 turef. 



We have here assumed it as a given principle, that it 

 is the nature of the living fibre to contract on the appli- 

 cation of any foreign stimulus, and in this we are sup- 

 ported by the experiments of Fordyce, and by those of 

 many others. 



That this, therefore, is an original source of mecha- 

 nical power will not be denied, but that, as has by 

 many writers been contended, it is an independent source 

 of power will not appear so evident, for, as we before 

 observed, motion and a certain temperature must exist 

 or be produced, before those great characteristics of life, 

 sensibility and irritability, will be discovered. 



* Page 13. 



t The learned gentleman seems to have forgotten, that children 

 are horn with noses, which furnish open avenues for the passage of 

 the air to the lungs. 



VOL. III. PART I, B 



