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io8 Mr. Abernethy’s Observations on 
blood is not oxygenated in the lungs, it is unfit to support the 
animal powers. There is an experiment related by Buffon, 
the truth of which, I believe, has not been publicly contro- 
verted, and which tends greatly to misrepresent this subject. 
He says, that he caused a bitch to bring forth her puppies un- 
der warm water ; that he suddenly removed them into a pail of 
warm milk ; that he kept them immersed in the milk for more 
than half an hour; and that when they were taken out of it, all 
the three were alive. He then allowed them to respire about 
half an hour, and again immersed them in the warm milk, 
where they remained another half hour ; and, when taken out, 
two were vigorous, but the third seemed to languish : this sub- 
mersion was again repeated, without apparent injury to the 
animals. 
This experiment is so directly contrary to what we are led 
to believe from all others, and also to the information derived 
from cases which frequently occur in the practice of midwifery, 
(in which, an interruption to the circulation through the umbi- 
lical chord occasions the death of the foetus,) as to make me sus- 
pect its truth : I was therefore induced to examine what would 
happen in a similar experiment. I did not indeed cause the 
bitch to bring forth her puppies in water; but immersed a 
puppy, shortly after its birth, under water which was of the 
animal temperature. It lost all power of supporting itself in 
about 6 o seconds, and would shortly have perished, had I not 
removed it into the air. Neither could I, by repeating this ex- 
periment, so accustom the animal to the circulation of unoxy- 
genated blood, as to lengthen the term of its existence in such 
an unnatural situation. I thought that a dog might have been 
made a good diver in this way; but, having satisfied myself 
