134 a REPORT—1862. | 
On Tobacco in relation to Physiology. By T. Reynonps. 
~The author commenced his paper by adverting to the value of saliva, which he 
averred was intended for the purposes of digestion, and ought not to be unneces- 
sarily wasted, which was the case with a vast number of habitual smokers. The 
purity of the saliva ought to be preserved, which could not be the case if it were 
tainted with smoke. He pointed to the fact that the people of Israel, as we read 
in Holy Writ, were not an enfeebled race, because they did not infringe natural 
laws. The paper proceeded to quote the names of various medical men who were 
opposed. to the practice of smoking; some avowing that tobacco-smoke, being con- 
veyed into the stomach, injured the brain. One doctor had seen leeches fall dead 
when sucking blood from the veins of a man who smoked, the blood of the smoker 
being much more impure than that of the non-smoker. Dr. Copland avowed that 
smoking arrested the growth of the young. Dr. Seymour, in writing to the Earl 
of Shaftesbury, stated that smoking was a remote cause of insanity, and produced 
premature constitutional decay; in fact, smoking was attended with many unfor- 
tunate tendencies, 
On the Study of the Circulation of the Blood. By Guorcr Rosryson, M.D., 
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, &¢., Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
The writer commenced by observing that Harvey having established the general 
law of the circulation of the blood, and expressed an opinion that all the secondary 
functions depended on it, left to posterity the task of investigating its mode of 
action in inducing the other phenomena of life. But while every succeeding gene- 
ration has furnished fresh proof of the importance of this discovery, comparatively 
little has been done towards elucidating the manner in which the motion of the 
blood acts in the production of its numerous and diversified effects, although the 
actions directly dependent on it are not only physiologically interesting, but also 
play an important part in the production and removal of disease. 
Among the causes which have interfered with the proper development of Harvey’s 
views, the writer notices the undue prevalence of a metaphysical physiology, and 
a consequent disregard of the legitimate application of the principles of physical 
science to the explanation of the actions of the living body. Fre contends that this 
preference of the ideal to the real still operates to some extent in the same manner 
as when Harvey’s hydraulic reasoning shocked the prejudices of his contemporaries, 
and that the doubts still occasionally expressed as to the sufficiency of the heart as 
the prime mover of the mass of blood, the assumed existence of undemonstrable 
adjuvant forces, and the affectation of incredulity as to the applicability of the laws 
of hydraulics to the solution of the physiological questions directly connected with 
the blood’s motion, all evidence the injurious effects of the continued neglect of 
natural philosophy as a branch of medical education, and the retarding influence 
on medical science of such inattention to the physical agencies operating in the 
performance of the vital functions. In further confirmation of this opinion, he 
alludes to the fact that certain views as to the mechanism of vascular absorption 
and effusion, which he published many years since as the result of an attempt to 
explain on hydrodynamic principles some of the uses of the circulation, Nee 
neither been received nor refuted by the systematic writers on physiology, who are 
still satisfied with old doctrines on these subjects, applicable only to stagnant liquids, 
and quite incapable of accounting for some of the aes in question. He 
then asks on what other principle of research than that adopted by Harvey him- 
self can we ever hope to understand the action of the currents of blood in accom- 
plishing their various uses; and refers to the evident subservience of the structural 
arrangements and physico-vital pesabataes of the organs of sight, hearing, respi- 
ration, speech, motion, &c., to the physical principles involved in each particular 
function, as a proof of the operation of the general laws of matter in the living 
body, and of the consequent applicability of hydrodynamic reasoning to the expla- 
nation of many of the uses served in the animal economy by the innumerable streams 
of blood incessantly permeating the tissues. 
In the application of these principles, it is essential to observe closely the physical 
