110 OF AMMAL HEAT. 



the celebrated traveller and formerly the captain of the 

 George, by the remarkable experiments* of many 

 excellent physiologists, f This striking prerogative of 

 man is evinced by his being restricted to no climate, 

 but inhabiting every part of the earth from Hudson's 

 bay, where Mercury freezes, and from Nova Zembla, 

 to the scorching shore of Senegal. 



165. The explanation of this circumstance is equally 

 simple and natural, and founded on the doctrine which 

 makes the lungs the grand receivers or focus, and 

 the decomposition of the oxygenised portion of the 

 air (148) the source or fomites, of our heat. 



166. For, as the oxygenous part of the inspired air 

 is decomposed in the air-cells of the lungs, in such a 

 way that its base, which by its union with latent caloric 

 was before aeriform, now separates from this caloric, 

 it would appear that, by this decomposition, one por- 

 tion of the caloric is rendered sensible in the bronchiae, 

 while the other enters in a latent form into the blood, 

 circulating in the innumerable and delicate net-works 

 of the pulmonary vessels.;}: 



167. When the oxygenised blood thus charged with 

 latent heat circulates through the aortic system, it 

 acquires carbon in the small vessels and sets free much 



* Duhamcl and Tdlet, Mim. de VAcad. det Scienc. de Paris. 1704. 

 lllagden and Do'oson, P kilos. Trata. 1765. 



f The beat of the weather, even in Europe, occasionally exceeds our natural 

 temperature. This was the case on the third of Aug. 1783, at noon, when I 

 was on the Lucerne Alps, in company with the excellent Sehnydcr of Wartensec. 

 The Thermometer in the shade stood above 100°. Fahr. and when applied tu 

 the body, invariably .sunk to near 1)7°. 



J See Lichtenberg's animadversions upon this part of Crawford's Theory, iu 

 bis notes to Erxlebcu's Anfa*gsgr. dtr Nahtrlehre. p. 417. ed. \ i. 



