This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1844 Excerpt: ... PREFACE. The attention of the author had been particularly directed to the phenomena of circulation as early as the year 1827, and the results of his investigations, at that time entered upon, were afterwards given to the public in a treatise entitled: An Experimental Inquiry Into The Laws WHICH REGULATE THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC AND Animal Life. In this, original views were brought forward explanatory of changes in the distribution and qualities of the blood--views which met not only with a favourable reception from the leading medical journals in this country, but were alluded to in a gratifying manner by eminent writers both at home and abroad. Edinburgh: Printed for Maclachlan and Stewart, and Simpkin and Marshall, London, 1829. In the study of the subjects which then fell under consideration, it appeared to him that the serious discrepancies in prevailing doctrines concerning the moving powers of the blood, were to be traced to the unphilosophical methods pursued in the investigation of them. They had not been surveyed in their wide and mutual relations to each other, hence the conditions induced in the experimental researches of the physiologist had a value and significance which were not understood. They were inteipreted according to the prepossessions of the inquirer. By one they were imagined to demonstrate the transmission of the impulse of the heart to the remote columns of venous blood--by another the agency of the arteries, and by a third the inactivity of the capillaries. By others, however, the conditions were regarded as leading to very different conclusions. An elaborate examination of the sanguiferous system tended to prove, that the diversity of opinion on these matters was clearly to be ascribed to the partial and illogical manner in wh...