124 PHYSIOLOGY. 



when exposed to the air. The liver the same. This shows that the 

 influence of the air can act through the coats of the vessels. 



When I was injecting the lungs of a man, the injection did not run 

 freely; I then inflated them, and found that the injection immediately 

 ran with freedom. 



I find that in the human lungs there is a thin cartilage at the angle 

 of inflection of two branches [of the bronchia], where it is membranous 

 both in the trunk and in the two branches. 



The cells of the lungs seem to increase in size the further from the 

 trunk, or trachea; so that the trachea and its ramifications bear no 

 proportion to the cells. 



It is impossible for the lungs to be so collapsed, while air is excluded 

 the chest, as to obstruct mechanically the passage of the blood through 

 them ; and, if that were really the case, there never coidd be dark 

 blood in the left side. For if there is a collapse, then there is no 

 motion of the blood : all stands still. If removing the collapse be the 

 essential thing, or what is absolutely necessary in the recovery [of 

 drowned or asphyxiated persons], how have so many recovered where 

 such attention has not been used ? 



When an animal dies whose circulation goes on through the lungs 

 after respiration ceases, the collection of blood in the two ventricles is 

 not exactly of equal heats, the right being warmer by one or two 

 degrees than the left ; and if an animal dies while the lungs are in- 

 flated along with the actions of the heart, where the blood in the right 

 side is dark and the left red, the heat in the right side will still be 

 greater : but, upon waiting five minutes, the left will be several degrees 

 warmer, so that the right either loses its heat faster or the left generates 

 heat. But this last part which I am going to relate has not been tried, 

 when both sides were black, with that accuracy as the first ; viz. which 

 side of the heart ceases to act first when respiration is kept up, and 

 which side begins first upon inflation. 



Coleman 1 asserts that inflating the lungs alternately, and the heart 

 acting, there is no change of colour in the blood of the left auricle, 

 which cannot be true. 



The only time that water can possibly get into the lungs, in drown- 

 ing, is just at the last inspiration, which is an inspiration of extreme 

 necessity. 



The proportion of the blood contained in the two sides of the heart 

 after a violent death, as by drowning, hanging, or suffocation from bad 

 air, is commonly as 12 in the right to 7 in the left side. But, in 



1 [Professor Edward Coleman, of the Veterinary College ; the work referred to 

 by Hunter is "1 Dissertation on natural and suspended Respiration." 8vo.] 



