IN DISEASES. 379 



(ct) In three hours a rabbit excreted, at the mean temperature, 

 the following quantities of carbonic acid : 



Immediately before being wounded .... .... 3*004 grammes. 



Twelve hours after 2'941 



On the second day 2'986 



third day 2'213 



fourth day 2'347 



fifth day 2-066 



According to P. Hervier and St. Sager, many acute inflam- 

 mations, such as meningitis, peritonitis, metritis, and acute arthritic 

 rheumatism, yield an excess of carbonic acid (hypercrinie carbon- 

 ique), and all inflammations in which the respiration is implicated, 

 as pneumonia, pleurisy, and pericarditis, yield less than the normal 

 quantity of this acid (hypocrinie carbonique). 



But what opinion can we form of experiments which, like those 

 made by Hervier and Sager, have led to results diametrically 

 opposed to the best observations, and which have exhibited dis- 

 tinctions of such extreme delicacy, that other observers have been 

 unable to arrive at such nicety of observation, even when employ- 

 ing more exact methods ? What are we to think when we see that 

 these experimentalists found that less carbonic acid was exhaled 

 during the period of digestion than in a state of fasting ; that they 

 distinguished two maxima and two minima of the exhalation of 

 carbonic acid, of which the one maximum occurred at 9 o'clock in 

 the morning, the other at 1 1 o'clock at night, while the one mini- 

 mum was observed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and the other as 

 early as 5 o'clock ; that they observed the quantity of excreted* 

 carbonic acid constantly rise with the pressure of air, and found 

 invariably more carbonic acid exhaled after animal food than after 

 a vegetable diet, and even without in any way investigating the 

 proximate coincident causes ? 



According to these experimentalists, moreover, the excretion of 

 carbonic acid is augmented in the cold stage of intermittent fever, 

 and still more so in the hot stages. " When the patients perspire, 

 the air they exhale hardly varies from the ordinary air. Again, 

 the normal relations of the excretion of carbonic acid remain 

 unchanged in all chronic diseases combined with fever, as in 

 chlorosis, diabetes, the beginning of cancer, nervous affections, and 

 chronic inflammations. The quantity of consumed carbon falls in 

 measles, scarlatina, roseola, erythema, during the period of suppur- 

 ation, in scurvy, in purpura, anaemia, anasarca, the last stages of 

 cancerous, scrofulous, or syphilitic degenerations, in typhus, dysen- 



