A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



yet it is indebted to that viscus for its contin- 



THE FUNCTION OF RESPIRATION 



It is a curious commentary on the crude notions of 

 mechanics of previous generations that it should have 

 been necessary to prove by experiment that the thin, 

 almost membranous stomach of a mammal has not 

 the power to pulverize, by mere attrition, the foods 

 that are taken into it. However, the proof was now 

 for the first time forthcoming, and the question of the 

 general character of the function of digestion was for- 

 ever set at rest. Almost simultaneously with this great 

 advance, corresponding progress was made in an allied 

 field : the mysteries of respiration were at last cleared 

 up, thanks to the new knowledge of chemistry. The 

 solution of the problem followed almost as a matter of 

 course upon the advances of that science in the latter 

 part of the century. Hitherto no one since Mayow, of 

 the previous century, whose flash of insight had been 

 strangely overlooked and forgotten, had even vaguely 

 surmised the true function of the lungs. The great 

 Boerhaave had supposed that respiration is chiefly 

 important as an aid to the circulation of the blood ; his 

 great pupil, Haller, had believed to the day of his death 

 in 1777 that the main purpose of the function is to 

 form the voice. No genius could hope to fathom the 

 mystery of the lungs so long as air was supposed to 

 be a simple element, serving a mere mechanical pur- 

 pose in the economy of the earth. 



But the discovery of oxygen gave the clew, and very 

 soon all the chemists were testing the air that came 



92 



