142 ANALYTIC SECT. XVII. 
Lavoisier and Seguin make it amount to two 
pounds ; such discrepancies must invariably exist 
in physiological quantities; and on this head I 
shall once for all, transcribe the opinion of Bichat: 
“To calculate with Borelli the power of a muscle, 
with Keil the swiftness of the blood, with Jurine 
and Lavoisier the quantity of air entering the 
lungs, is to build on a quicksand an edifice solid 
in itself, but which shortly falls for want of a 
stable foundation.” — Bichat sur la Vie et la 
Mort, 76. 
cecil. While the circulation continues in 
warm-blooded animals, respiration cannot be long 
interrupted without extreme agony and imminent 
danger; when the venous blood passes into the 
left ventricle of the heart, without giving off its 
carbon by the air-cells, and is distributed to the 
other organs, the action of the nervous system is 
speedily affected, and muscular spasm and death 
ensue. This property of producing spasm, pos- 
sessed by the carbon of the venous blood, seems 
to be instrumental in dilatation of the chest. 
cccLitt. When the venous blood enters the 
capillaries of the lungs, its carbon makes the 
muscles of inspiration contract; the air is sucked 
into the cells, the carbon assumes an aériform state 
in combining with oxygen, and the muscles of 
inspiration immediately expand on the removal of 
the cause of their contraction. The connexion of 
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