General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Thus charged with combined caloric, the blood arrives in the capillary
system; there it gives it out, wherever it undergoes changes. It is
in fact in this system that it is changed into nutritive substance,
into that of the secretions, exhalations, &c. All the functions in
which this fluid changes its nature, in which certain principles are
separated from it, to form certain substances destined especially
to particular uses, necessarily disengage its caloric. I cannot
say precisely how this happens, whether it is more in the internal
alterations that the blood undergoes in furnishing nutrition, or in
those destined to furnish secretion or exhalation. This only is the
general principle, and exhibits three things; 1st, the entrance of
caloric into the blood, with all the substances that repair its losses;
2d, the circulation in a combined state of the caloric newly entered;
3d, extrication of this combined fluid, to form free caloric by the
changes and different alterations that the blood undergoes in the
general capillary system, in forming the materials of the different
functions.
The extrication of caloric is, then, a phenomenon exactly analogous to
those of which the general capillary system is the seat. In nutrition,
in fact, there is, 1st, a combination of new foreign substances with
the blood; 2d, circulation in the great vessels of these substances
combined; 3d, separation of the nutritive substance to enter the
organs. So also the elements of the secreted fluids combine, then
circulate combined, then leave the blood to be thrown out. So, in fine,
every exhaled fluid combines, circulates, and is then separated from
the blood.
From this it is evident that, 1st, the entrance of foreign substances
into the blood by respiration, by digestion or even cutaneous
absorption; 2d, the combination of these substances with the blood
in sanguification; 3d, their circulation in the arterial system, are
three general phenomena common to secretions, exhalations, nutrition,
and calorification, if I may be allowed the term; for the production
of heat is a function and not a property; hence why I think the word
caloricity does not express it.
The caloric arrives, then, in the capillary system combined with the
matter of secretions, exhalations, and nutrition. The blood is the
common fluid that results from all these combinations. In the general
capillary system each part is separated; the caloric to be distributed
over the whole body and afterwards pass out; the fluids of the
secretions go out by the glands; those of exhalations escape from their
respective surfaces; those of nutrition remain in the organs.
It seems to me, that the explanation which exhibits nature always
pursuing an uniform course in her operations, drawing the same results
from the same principles, has a greater degree of probability than that
which shows her separating, as it were, this phenomenon from all the
others, in the way which she produces it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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