»o 
Mr, Carlisle’s Lecture 
The blood appears to be the medium of conveying heat to 
the different parts of the body; and the changes of animal 
temperature in the same individual at various times, or in its 
several parts, are always connected with the degree of rapidity 
of the circulation. It is no very wide stretch of physiological 
deduction to infer, that this increased temperature is produced 
by the more frequent exposure of the mass of blood to the 
respiratory influence, and the short time allowed in each circuit 
for the loss of the acquired heat. 
The blood of an animal is usually coagulated immediately 
after death, and the muscles are contracted ; but, in some pe- 
culiar modes of death, neither the one, nor the other of these 
effects are produced : with such exceptions, the two phenomena 
are concomitant. 
A preternatural increase of animal heat delays the coagu- 
lation of the blood, and the last contractions of the muscles t 
these contractions gradually disappear, before any changes 
from putrefaction are manifested ; but the cup in the coagulum 
of blood does not relax in the same manner ; hence it may be 
inferred, that the final contraction of muscles is not the coagu- 
latiort of the blood contained in them ; neither is it a change in 
the reticular membrane, nor in the blood-vessels, because such 
contractions are not general throughout those substances. The 
coagulation of the blood is a certain criterion of death. The 
reiterated visitations of blood are not essential to muscular 
irritability, because the limbs of animals, separated from the 
body, continue for a long time afterwards capable of contrac- 
tions, and relaxations. 
The constituent elementary materials of which the peculiar 
animal and vegetable substances consist, are not separable by 
