\0L. III.] PHILOSOPHICAL TIIANSACTIONS. 207 



muscles are so suddenly inflated and contracted, should proceed from the arterial 

 blood and the nervous juice. He considers rather that the nitrous particles pro- 

 ceeding from the inspired air, do by the afflux of the arterial blood every where 

 flow between the fibres of the muscles, and lodge therein ; and that the animal 

 spirits made up of a very volatile salt, and not much dilfering from the distilled 

 spirit of blood highly rectified, do as often as they are sent from the nerves for 

 motion, meet with the former nitrous and differing particles; by which mixture 

 of a kind of volatile spirit of blood, and a saline liquor united together, is 

 caused that sudden explosion, and consequently the inflation and contraction of 

 the muscles. To which ebullition, he says, the blood may perhaps also contri- 

 bute something, forasmuch as its sulphureous particles, conjoined with the nitre 

 inspired, may render that juice nitro-sulphureous, and yet more explosive. And 

 thus he thinks the motion made in the heart, (a muscular substance) to be 

 done no otherwise than that in other muscles. Whence he concludes, that 

 upon the suppressing of respiration, when that darting nitre so requisite to all 

 motion is deficient, the cardiac nerves convey their influx in vain, so that the 

 pulsation of the heart ceasing, and consequently the afflux of the blood to the 

 brain, death must needs follow; but yet that the animal may live a while with- 

 out respiration, forasmuch as the blood contained in the vessels of the lungs, 

 and impregnated with air enough, may suffice to maintain for some few mo- 

 ments the motion of the heart. 



And thus much of the first tract; the other, treating of the rickets, examines 

 in the first place wherein nutrition consists, and finds that the nervous juice per- 

 forms not alone the whole office of that operation, in regard that besides it the 

 blood diffused through the arteries has no small share in that work, seeing that 

 the nervous liquor mixed with the blood causes a certain effen'escence, whereby 

 the matter fit for nutrition is precipitated, and that for want of this ner\^ous 

 liquor the blood in this distemper of the rickets, though it be laudable enough, 

 yet being destitute of its own ferment, is not able to excite heat in the parts, 

 nor to execute the office of nutrition. So that the rickets, in the opinion of this 

 author, are a disease caused by an unequal distribution of the nervous juice, from 

 whose either defect or superabundance some parts defrauded of nourishment 

 are emaciated, others being surcharged, grow into a disproportionate bigness. 

 Proceeding to assign the cause of this inequality in the distribution of the 

 aliment, he finds it not in the influx of the brain, but in the obstruction of the 

 spinal marrow, whence it happens, that, this high way of the passage of the 

 spirits being dammed up, the parts to be sustained and cherished by that nutri- 

 tious juice, must needs languish and fall into an atrophy and the highest con- 

 sumption, 



VOL. I. P P 



