214 Dr. Currie’s Account of the 
\ 
the heart pulsated with great steadiness and due force. In 
the last experiment, when the heat sunk rapidly, Sutton said 
that he felt a coldness and faintness at his stomach, which he 
had not perceived before, and when I felt the motion of his 
heart, it was feeble and languid. In some future trials of the 
effects of immersion in fresh water (one of which I shall de- 
tail), the same coldness at the stomach preceded a rapid fall 
of the mercury ; and these facts, together with the effects I 
found from applying a considerable heat to this part when the 
body was chilled with cold, convince me that there is some 
peculiar connection of the stomach, or of the diaphragm, or 
both, with the process of animal heat. Whoever will consider 
the rapidity with which a dead body would have cooled im- 
mersed in water of the temperature of 40°, may form some es- 
timate of the force with which the process of animal heat must 
have acted in the experiments already recited. These expe- 
riments, however, furnish irrefragable proofs of the futility of 
some of the theories of animal heat. The increase of heat, in 
fever, has led some persons to believe that animal heat is pro- 
duced by, or immediately connected with, the action of the 
heart and arteries ; here, however, it may be observed, that 
while heat must have been generated in the bath with more 
than fourfold its usual rapidity, the vibrations of the arterial 
system were unusually slow. Another, and a very beautiful 
theory of animal heat, supposes it immediately to depend on 
respiration; but in the bath, after the first irregular action of 
the diaphragm from the shock of immersion was over, the 
breathing became regular, and unusually slow. Lastly, the 
curious phsenomenon of the heat rising, and falling, and rising 
again, in the bath, with the body at rest, and the temperature 
