This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1806 edition. Excerpt: ...on the Bath waters pi 259, he describes fishes as collecting vital air from the water, and respiring like land animals. (Aereum aliquod vitale ab aqua, veluti alias ab aura secretum et in cruoris massam trajiciatur.) The air bladder he considers rather as a reservoir of air to be inspired, than a receptacle for excreted air; though the latter opinion is made probable by Dr. Priestley. The first part of his Treatises on Respiration is is chiefly anatomical. In p. 300 et seq. he states more fully his opinion, that vital air, is of a nitrosaline nature: that it is the principle of life, both in Animals and Vegetables: that combined with the sulphureo-saline particles in the blood, it is the stimulus to the muscular fibre, and of course to the heart See Nich. Journ. T. 3 p. 119 on the probability of fishe separating xygcn from the water they inhabit. Q heart as a muscle, p. 305; but that the fermentation occasioned by the introduction of these particles into the blood, is not confined to the left ventricle of the heart, but commences, in the passage of the blood through the lungs, and continues in the Arteries. This evidently approaches the theory, advanced by Dr. Goodwyn in his tract on the Connection of life with respiration about sixteen years ago, viz. that the pure air combined with the blood is the stimulus to the left ventricle of the heart, and produces the alternate contraction, and dilation on which the circulation depends. Dr. Lower, in his treatise de mptu sanguinis, and Fracassati, and Dr. Frederick Slare attributed the change of the colour of venous blood into a florid red, to the combination of the air with it. Lower I believe preceded Mayow, who quotes him, p. 148; the date of Fracassatis and Dr. Slares observations. I...