INTERNAL RESPIRATION. 7 8i 
Alexander Schmidt considered that in the Mom I an active oxidation 
took place, for he concluded from his experiments that readily oxidisable 
substances and active oxygen or ozone existed in that fluid, and further 
that the oxidation in the body increased with the velocity of the hlood. 
The haemoglobin was looked upon as the regulator of the consumption 
of oxygen, and this erroneous view, propounded by Lothar Mayer, is still 
accepted by some medical writers. 
As in all tissues, so in the blood there is a certain amount of 
oxidation, but the evidence about to be given will show that it is small 
and unimportant when compared with that taking place in muscles and 
glands. The blood is not the cause of the oxidation of the body, the 
cause is in the living cells of the tissues. 1 
The chief evidence is as follows : — A frog can live in an atmosphere 
of nitrogen for seventeen hours, and during this time gives off carbon 
dioxide, in fact during the first five hours it discharges as much as it would 
under normal conditions. 2 A frog will live a day or two in oxygen after 
its blood has been entirely replaced by normal saline solution, 3 and when 
in this condition its intake of oxygen and output of carbon dioxide are 
equal to that of a normal frog. 4 The experiments of Finkler 5 show 
that the consumption of oxygen is independent, naturally within 
certain limits, of the velocity of the circulating blood. Further, the 
respiratory exchange of rabbits, deprived by bleeding of one-half of their 
haemoglobin, is equal to that of the same animals before the loss of 
blood ; 6 patients with simple anaemia or with severe leukaemia absorb 
as much oxygen and excrete as much carbon dioxide as healthy men at 
rest and upon a similar diet. 7 
It was long ago shown by Spallanzani that living tissues removed 
from a recently killed animal took up oxygen and discharged carbon 
dioxide, and that this exchange was greater in most tissues than it was in 
blood. Similar experiments have been made by others. 8 
Paul Bert placed tissues from a recently killed dog in air for 
twenty-four hours, the temperature varying from about 0° to 10°, and 
obtained the following results : — 
100 grins, of muscle absorbed 50 -8 c.c. of oxygen, and discharged 56 -8 c.c. of carbon dioxide, 
brain ,, 45 "8 ,, 42-8 ,, 
,, kidney ,, 37 - ,, 15-6 ,, 
spleen ,, 27"3 ,, 15'4 
testis ,, 18-3 ,, 27*5 
broken \ 
bone & \ ,, 17-2 ,, 8-1 
marrow J 
1 Pfliiger, Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol., Bonn, 1875, Bd. x. S. 251 ; 1878, Bd. xviii. S. 247 ; 
1893, Bd. liv. S. 333. 
2 Pfliiger, ibid., 1875, Bd. x. S. 251. 
3 Cohnheim, Virchow's Archiv, Bd. xlv. 
4 Oertmann, Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol., Bonn, 1877, Bd. xv. S. 381. 
5 Ibid., 1875, Bd. x. S. 36S. 
" Pembrey and Giirber, Journ. Physiol., Cambridge and London, 1894, vol. xv. p. 449. 
7 Hannover, " De quantitate relativa et absoluta acidi carbonici ab homine sano et 
cegroto exhalati"; Abstract given by M oiler, Ztschr. f. Biol., Miinchen, 1878, Bd. xiv. 
S. 546 ; Pettenkofer and Voit, Ztschr. f. Biol., Miinchen, 1869, Bd. v. S. 319. 
8 Spallanzani, "Mem. sur la respiration," trad, par Senebier, 1803, p. 86 ; G. Liebig, Arch, 
f. Anat., Physiol, u. vHssensch, Med., 1850, Bd. xvii. S. 393 ; Matteucci, Compt. rend. Acad, 
d. sc, Paris, 1856, tome xlii. p. 648 ; Ann. de chim. et phys., S6r. 3, Paris, tome xlvii. p. 129 ; 
Valentin, Arch. f. physiol. Heilk., Stuttgart, 1855, Bd. xiv. S. 431 ; 1857, N.F. Bd. i. S. 
285 ; Bernard, " Lecons sur les proprietes physiol. des liquides," Paris, 1859, tome i. p. 403 ; 
Paul Bert, "Lecons sur la physiologie comparee de la respiration," Paris, 1S70, p. 46; 
Regnard, '•Recli. exper. sur les combustions respiratoires," Paris, 1879, p. 23. 
