230 ON THE NONABSORPTION Or OXIGEN IN RESPIRATION. 



Mr. Ellis also states, that, if air be made to entef tfie blood, 

 it quickly destroys life; and he refers for pro<^f of this to 

 an experiment of Mr. Bichat, who not only, like Dr. Hales, 

 injected air into the lungs, but confined it there, by which 

 means it did enter into the blood vessels, and speedily 

 proved fatal. Where now is the contradiction in all this.' 

 Two different positions, tending doubtless to the support of 

 one general proposition, were, by these experiments to ht 

 establislied ; and, if the experiments be deemed correct, 

 they go directly to fulfil their destined purpose. In his zeal 

 against the general proposition, Mr. Acton seems to have 

 overlooked the varying nature of the proofs adduced rn its 

 support, and he thus sees contradiction in opposite experi- 

 ments directed to the establishment of dissimilar truths. 

 Messrs. Alien In my postscript I observed, that the late experiments of 

 fovmclThe oxi- M^^'^i's* Allen and Pepys seemed to support Mr. Ellis's opf- 

 gen lost in re- nion, that " all the oxigen gas lost in respiration was to be 

 vertpd*into*car- ^'°""^ ^^ ^^^^ carbonic acid produced." As Mr. Acton pro- 

 bonicacid. nounces this an " inaccurate and unfair statement," I must 

 beg leave, in justice to myself and to those gentlemen, tg 

 deliver a short abstract of their experiments nearly in their 

 ov.n words. In the analysis of the respired air of thirteen 

 experiments, in each of which nearly from 3 to 4000 cubic 

 inches of air were once passed through the lungs, and m 

 one instance little less than 10000, where " the breathing 

 was nearly natural, the operator scarcely fatigued, and his 

 pulse at the end of the experiment (which lasted from 5 to 

 24 minutes) not raised more than about one beat in a mi- 

 nute," these gentlemen found ihe quantity of oxigen gas 

 and carbonic acid, taken together, to amount always to 21 

 parts in the hundred, which exactly corresponded to the 

 proportion of oxigen gas, previously ascertained to exist in 

 the respired air : wherefore tfjey concluded, ** that the 

 quantity of carbonic acid gas emitted is exactly equal, bulk 

 for bulk, to tlie oxigen consumed." This conclusion is 

 just what it should be, a simple expression of the fact, and 

 nothing more; and it goes entirely to support the opinion of 

 Mr. Ellis, to which I before alluded. 

 In some cases But in two other experiments, which lasted only two or 

 howeveroxi- three minutes, where not more than 300 cubic inches of air 



were 



