EXPERIMENTS OF RTCHERAND. 843 



perature of the water. Now it is obvious that in 

 these experiments, Mr. Hunter overlooked the 

 fact, that whenever any part of the living body is 

 placed in a fluid medium above its own tempera- 

 ture, a large portion of caloric is transferred to the 

 rapidly circulating blood, and conveyed through- 

 out the body, by which the temperature of the 

 water is reduced, and that of the body raised, as 

 proved by the fact, that on placing the feet in 

 hot water, the whole body becomes gradually 

 warmed. But as there is no circulation in a dead 

 part, the caloric of the water is not carried off by 

 the blood, and diffused through the body ; there- 

 fore accumulates in the part immersed, and 

 without much diminishing the temperature of the 

 water. 



Were it not that the foregoing fallacies of Hun- 

 ter have been embraced by many distinguished 

 physiologists of the present day, I should have 

 passed them over in silence. But it is main- 

 tained by Richerand, that life has the power of 

 generating cold, because on applying bags of hot 

 sand along the leg of a man whose femoral artery 

 had been tied for the cure of popliteal aneurism, 

 he found that its temperature rose several degrees 

 higher than that of the sound leg when treated in 

 the same manner. But in such cases, a limb in 

 which the circulation is nearly suspended, be- 

 comes sooner heated than a healthy one, for the 

 same reason that the stationary surface of the 



