Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1854-09-30
COMMUNICATION.

FOR THE NATIONAL IsrELrIaEscxn.

THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENoEH.
Medical philosophy, perhaps than any other, is
sadly defective in many Of even its most important de
and this is the more remarkable since the
human body has been the subject of constant study from
the most remote historical periods down to the present
time Indeed, we know of time in the worlds his
tory when has been driven by the thousand ills
to which human flesh the unwilling heir to study the
phenomena Of the human frame; and yet even to THIS
day, with all the light which improved methods Oh
observation and experiment have thrown upon medical
science, not able to explain satisfactorily even
of the most ssmmon phenomena which our oodies
present; SUCH instance, those Of nutrton secre-
ton, innervation, animal heat, SC.
Our attention has Of late been more particularly drawn
to the subject of animal heat from witnessing its pheno-
mena in fever and we propose offer here obser-
vatons the subject And here, IN limins 1t may well
be asked what heat itself is Can any tell US? The
unscentGc reader may be startled at this questionat
the idea that science has yet progressed far enough
to be able tell us what common thing as heat
But So The unsophiscated swain to whom
all tile technicaties of science and the jarGp Of the
schools utterly unknown knows just as num- in spite
of the scorchng he has felt during the past summer
of the real nature of heat what the books call cao
Professors Faraday Lebg Lardner or any other of
great philosophers The effects of 1t are all we in reality
know and this much the brute creation know OF it,
Whether it be matter, the more immateral effect Of
certain states Of matter question agating the
scientific world The prevalent opinion, for 1t is
nothing but an opinion is that heat is not natter that
1t is the effect of motion excited among the particles of
all bodies which exhibit the phenomena of heat To this
opinion we ourselves incline The phenomena of rada-
zion and Of friction well those observable in fevers
all seem point towards this view Of the nature OF heat
Sir Humphrey Davy found that he could easily melt ice
without fire by simply rubbing two pieces Of 1T together
thus proving that the phenomena Of repuson are not
dependant peculiar elastic fluid called calorc for
their existence other words there is no such thing
as caoric" ssThe elevation of temperature, says Dr.
Lardner, produced in body by the incidence of
dant heat upon it is mechanical effect Of the dynami-
cal kind since the communication of heat to body is
merely the exciation the augmentation of certain
lions among its particles"
Physioogists and chemists very unsettled in their
views regarding the sources vital animal heat
most of them incline the chemical theory in form
or other That of Dr. w. b. Carpenter of London is that
the formation Of carbonc acid by the union of oxygen
absorbed from the air, with carbon set free from the
body is the main of the evolution of heat within
the animal system The precise mode in which this
union accomplished" he adds Sis not yet known but
Its certain that in whatever manner the combination
may take place certain measure Of caorc must be gen.
Grated. - Human Physiology, sec. S92
An attempt to give g the precise uode in which this
union is accomplished has been for the first time under
taken by Professor Thomas Spencer, of Philadelphia
His form Of the chemical theory is that the seat Of
sorfcatoa is in the systemic and puonic capillaries
and that the sole of the generation Of heat is first
the deoxydation Of carbonic acid in the systemic cap
iaries aud the formation there of bydrate Of carbon
and secondly the reoydaton of the hydrate Of carbon
in lungs both chemical changes the suppostion
that they take place. giving rise to the evolution of heat
Assuming that arteral blood contains both the protox
de of iron and the carbonate of the prooxde Professor
Spencer supposes the following complicated chemical
changes to take place in the systemic caplaries, Civ
ing the formation of the hydrated peroxide of iron
and ernary compound which he calls the hydrae Of
carbon Na