THEORY
OF
Circulation by Respiration.

SYNOPSIS OF ITS PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY.

WRITTEN, BY REQUEST,
For the “U. S. JOURNAL OF HOMŒOPATHY,”
BY EMMA WILLARD.

New-York:

FRANCIS HART & CO. PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, 63 CORTLANDT STREET.
1861.

THEORY
OF
CIRCULATION BY RESPIRATION.

SECTION I.

First step in the discovery—Animal Heat the product of Respiration. Second step—Heat evolved in the lungs by Respiration there produces Expansion. Third step—Expansion; implied motion, which from the organism must conduct the blood to the left ventricle of the Heart. Theory imperfect, until the formation of sufficient vapor or steam in the lungs is perceived and acknowledged.

To Dr. Marcy.—In complying with your request to write for your journal an article embodying my theory of the motive powers which produce the circulation of the blood, together with some account of its rise and progress, I obey what I regard as a call of duty; and thus requested, do it with pleasure.

But my theory, with its history, cannot thus be written without egotism. Logicians say, that the way to convince others is to retrace, in order, the steps by which you yourself became convinced, which is to be egotistic. But in this case, there is a further reason: the scientific discoverer must speak of the apparatus by which he experiments, and mine was often my own physical frame.

Twenty years ago, while yet my mind, laboring with this great subject, was condemned

“to drudge
Without a second and without a judge,”

you, sir, comprehended the hypothesis which has now become a theory, and you waited not for others to speak, but you fully acknowledged its truth; and although, in Hartford, as now in New-York, you were thronged with practice, (then allopathic), you yet found time to furnish me with added experiments, made in your office, confirmatory of its truth, which by your permission were afterwards added in your name to my published work.

The first step in the theory occurred to my mind in the winter of 1822, and while I was engaged in founding the Troy Female Seminary. Being in attendance on a course of lectures on chemistry, and at the same time teaching to a class Mrs. Marcett’s excellent work on that subject, one cold morning, as I was walking briskly up a hill, I said to myself, Why do I grow warm? Whence comes this accession of caloric? It cannot be transmitted to me from any object without, because every thing which comes in contact with me is cold. Snow is under my feet, and frosty air surrounds me; and, as to clothing, even the softest furs impart no warmth—they but keep from escaping that which comes from within. What other method besides transmission is there of gaining heat? There is the elimination of caloric, when, in substances chemically combining, weight is gained and bulk is lost. Is there any such combination going on in me? Yes; this atmospheric air, when I inspire it, has oxygen combined with nitrogen; but when I expire, the oxygen has disappeared, and heavier substances—carbonic acid gas and watery vapor—are returned in its place. Thus, it must be, animal heat is evolved. It is the product of respiration; and it is because I breathe faster and deeper, that more carbon is oxidized or burned, and more heat is set free in my lungs; and therefore I grow warm as I walk up this hill, though all around me is cold.

The mind, excited by new and great thoughts, works with unwonted energy; and mine at once collected so many proofs, that I became perfectly convinced of the truth of the hypothesis. In searching books, I found that Lavoisier had taught the same; but he dying, his doctrine was discarded by English chemists, Dr. Black leading the way, and therefore it did not then appear in English systems of chemistry. But from that time, I cherished it with a mother’s devotion, watched changes in my own physical frame relating to it, taught it to my pupils, and held warm disputes with the medical faculty, who opposed and contemned it.

In the summer of 1832, the Asiatic cholera appeared among us, appalling every heart. This plague, I said, is a disease of coldness and obstruction; and these doctors, wrong as they are on the subject of animal heat, can never understand it—though, if Lavoisier were living, he might. Let me, then, as best I may, consider anew the problem of heat as produced by respiration, and see whether I cannot find out something which has a bearing on the fatal coldness of this fearful disease. It is into the lungs, and no where else, that breathing introduces atmospheric air; and it is there that the oxidation of carbon or animal combustion takes place. Thus must caloric be imparted to the blood in the lungs; and in them is one-fifth of the blood of the system, of which seven-eighths is water.

The nature of heat is to expand all fluids. The blood in the lungs must, therefore, expand; and if it expands, it must move; and if it moves, it must, from the organism of the parts, move to the left ventricle of the heart, into which the valvular system opens to give it a free passage—whereas the valves of the right close against it. “Eureka!” I mentally exclaimed; “I have found the primum mobile of the circulation of the blood.” I had for years disbelieved that the heart’s slight mechanical impulse was that cause. In teaching Paley’s “Natural Theology,” my mind had come in contact with the passage in which he describes the heart’s more than Herculean labors; and I said, “This is altogether too much—the heart alone cannot perform all this—there must be some other power,” and an abiding desire to know what that power could be, prepared me for receiving this great idea. But my mind was agitated by it, as the sea is, when a great rock is thrown into its waters.

The cholera was then raging around me; and as I prepared to flee from it to a mountain air, I confided to a scientific friend, Professor Twiss of West Point, my hypothesis, which I regarded as probably the incipient germ of an important discovery.

But there was first the former theory to be disproved; and then there were new points to be investigated and established. In the ensuing winters of 1833, 4, and 5, I gave much attention to the subject, and employed professors in my school in the departments of chemistry and natural philosophy, who assisted me,—particularly by their ingenuity in the construction of such simple pieces of apparatus as were needed.

Thus we proved that, although the heart’s action gives pulsation, it does not necessarily give circulation. By an endless india-rubber tube, filled with water, coiled upon a table and struck repeatedly at one point, a pulsation was produced throughout, but no circulation. By affixing the tube to a vessel of water, and laying it on an inclined plane, the water ran through it in an equable current, making circulation with pulsation. Clasping the hand upon the tube in successive contractions, the fluid passed on per saltem, producing circulation and pulsation united, but no acceleration of the current. Now, add valves to the tube on each side of the opening hand, and you will have the current—which is moving by gravitation, accelerated by the hand’s impulse, as the blood’s current, first moved by respiration, undoubtedly is by the heart’s beat.