ERRORS OF LIEBIG. 905 



seen, that atmospheric oxygen unites with carbon 

 and hydrogen in the lungs, whore caloric is 

 evolved, that the caloric is thence conveyed 

 into the systemic capillaries, where it causes a 

 portion of the fibrin, albumen, and red globules 

 of arterial blood, to combine with the solids, and 

 to form the various secretions, by which the 

 temperature and vital activity of all the organs 

 are maintained at the expense of the arterial 

 blood, the temperature and vital properties of 

 which are diminished, when it assumes the venous 

 state, that so soon as the caloric by which the 

 particles of arterial blood are combined with the 

 tissues is expended by their action, the vital at- 

 traction of the solids gradually ceases, when they 

 are more or less rapidly dissolved, taken up by 

 the absorbents, conveyed into the general mass 

 of venous blood, and thence into the lungs, where 

 the whole is reconverted into arterial blood, until 

 nearly all the carbon and hydrogen are given off 

 as carbonic acid and water ; while the remaining 



means of which all fluids of whatever kind, as soon as they enter 

 the absorbent vessels which communicate with the veins, are 

 drawn towards the heart, the expansion of which produces a 

 vacuum, into which the blood is forced by the external pressure 

 of the atmosphere. (Op. Cit. p. 58.) For the rationale of the circu- 

 lation, the reader is referred to the fourth Book of this Work, 

 .Chapter III. Nor is it true, as Liebig maintains, that the capacity 

 of the chest, the volume of oxygen consumed, and the standard 

 temperature of animals are the same, whether at the poles or 

 the equator, nor that pulmonary diseases arise from excess of 

 oxygen, and hepatic diseases from excess of carbon (pp. 20 24). 



