466 ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE CUTANEOUS SECRETIONS, 
tion of its component parts, with the possibility of proportional 
elimination of the oxygenous products. 
In such a state of things, although the organs of sanguification 
may, so to express it, appeal to the nervous system, whence they 
derive their functional aptitude, the spinal marrow, struck with 
stupor through the circulation of carbonized blood, remains in- 
sensible to this physiological excitation, and no longer responds by 
reflex action to the wants of the organic apparatus soliciting it. 
Hence, the remarkable tardiness in the respiratory movements, 
in spite of the difficulty attending sanguification ; a difficulty con- 
tinually increasing, as indeed the poor animal feels conscious of : 
witness his distressing looks, without the smallest power on his 
part to remedy it. 
While the respiration continues disordered and embarrassed, the 
bronchi become filled with a spumous serosity ; which is nothing 
more than condensed pulmonary transpiration, more abundant than 
natural on account of the suppression of the cutaneous perspiration 
(which that of the lungs makes up) accumulating as liquid within 
the bronchi, both on account of its being in abundance, and from 
the tardiness of the respiration, which gives no time for the suf- 
ficiently ready removal of the columns of air that ought to become 
charged with it. And so from this sort of inertia or paralysis of 
the lung interfering with its action, in concert with that of the ex- 
piratory muscles, the auxiliary agents of its function, the con- 
densed excretion becomes as a foreign body obstructing the aerial 
canals, operating as a fresh obstacle to sanguification. 
This difficulty of sanguification, which is the principal pheno- 
menon in this curious experiment, is again recognizable through 
two prominent symptoms; to wit, the nature of the gases exhaled 
from the pulmonary surface, and the diminished calorification. In 
the beginning of the experiment, what is very remarkable, the 
pulmonary transpiration, which is more than double the natural 
quantity, compensates pretty well for it, at the same time that the 
proportion of carbonic acid becomes considerably augmented in the 
air respired. But this effect of re-action proving insufficient to 
depurate the blood of its sur-oxyde saturating properties, the 
amount of the combusted carbon exhaled with the air soon dimi- 
nishes, and with it falls the temperature of the body, which is, in 
fact, nought but an expression of the condition of the respiratory 
functions. 
It may well be imagined that under so many opposing influences 
the nervous actions grow dull, the muscular weak, until at length 
the animal sinks without the power of re-action, and by little and 
little fails altogether, like a lamp going out for want of oil : a 
comparison the more just in the present instance, from the circum- 
