446 



rature of animals is soon raised to 11° or even 16° above what it had 

 been previously, and death speedily ensues. The rapid diminution 

 or even total suppression of the cutaneous exhalation, on the other 

 hand, is by no means followed by a rise in the temperature of the 

 body. In general dropsies, which are attended with a remarkable 

 diminution of this secretion, an icy coldness usually pervades both 

 the body and the limbs. A great fall in the animal temperature was 

 found by Fourcauld, Becquerel and Breschet to be the effect of 

 covering the body with a varnish impervious to perspiration ; and 

 so serious was the general disturbance of the functions in these cir- 

 cumstances, that death usually ensued in the course of three or four 

 hours. 



The question will next arise, how does it happen that health and 

 even life can be so immediately dependent as we find them to be on the 

 elimination of so small a quantity of water as thirty-three ounces from 

 the general surface of the body in the course of twenty-four hours? 

 To this the author answers, that such elimination is important as 

 securing the conditions which are necessary for the endosmotic trans- 

 ference between arteries and veins of the fluids which minister to 

 nutrition and vital endowment. It is admitted by physiologists that 

 the blood, while still contained within its conducting channels, is 

 inert with reference to the body, no particle of which it can either 

 nourish or vivify until that portion of it which has been denomina- 

 ted the plasma has transuded from the vessels and arrived in imme- 

 diate contact with the particle that is to be nourished and vivified : 

 but no physiologist has yet pointed out the efficient cause of these 

 tendencies of the plasma, first, to transude through the wall of its 

 efferent vessels, and secondly, to find its w^ay back again into the 

 afferent conduits. The explanation given by the author is that, in 

 consequence of the out-going current of blood circulating over the 

 entire superficies of the body perpetually losing a quantity of water 

 by the action of the sudoriparous glands, the blood in the returning 

 channels has thereby become more dense and inspissated, and is 

 brought into the condition for absorbing, by endosmosis, the fluid 

 perpetually exuding from the arteries, which are constantly kept on 

 the stretch by the injecting force of the heart. 



In an appendix to the paper, the author points out a few of the 

 practical applications of which the above-mentioned theory is suscep- 

 tible. Interference wdth the function of the skin, and principally 

 through the agency of cold, he observes, is the admitted cause of the 

 greater number of acute diseases to which mankind, in the tempe- 

 rate regions of the globe, are subject. He who is said to have suf- 

 fered a chill, has, in fact, suff'ered a derangement or suppression of 

 the secreting action of his skin, a process which is altogether indis- 

 pensable to the continuance of life ; and a disturbance of the general 

 health follows as a necessary consequence. Animals exposed to the 

 continued action of a hot dry atmosphere die from exhaustion ; but 

 when subjected to the eff'ects of a moist atmosphere of a temperature 

 not higher than their own, they perish much more speedily ; being 



