Theory of Circulation by Respiration | Page 5

my personal friends, and to several physicians. They sent other copies, which procured notices, some of which were favorable, particularly one from the London Critic, and others, the reverse. As few copies of the book sold, I was not remunerated for the cost of publication. The copies sent to physicians were mostly unacknowledged--received in cold, if not contemptuous, silence. But my family physician, the worthy and learned Dr.?Robbins, to whom I dedicated the work, ever upheld me. He answered my questions, gave me instructions, and showed me post-mortem dissections; and to those who asked him if he believed in my theory, he wisely replied, "Mrs.?Willard is right as far as she goes." He knew that I made no pretensions to understand the vast variety of medical subjects not connected with the circulation, and that I never doubted his skill or disputed his prescriptions. An honest man, and a skilful physician, he deserved and had my unfailing confidence. And if, by reason of what I knew, I had prolonged my life, he had the longer kept a good and faithful patient. Lady-friends, to whom I had sent my work, had sometimes referred it to their medical advisers; and thus Dr.?Hiester, an eminent physician of Reading, Pa., became a believer. And in the same way, the eminent Dr.?Cartwright, then of Natchez, and President of the State Medical Association of Mississippi, came to a knowledge of those principles, which, as we shall hereafter show, he so remarkably elucidated.
In September, 1846, the New York Journal of Medicine, then edited by Dr. Charles A. Lee, contained a review or critique on my work, which, if the history of the theory shall hereafter become a matter of special interest, may, with my reply, contained in the March number of 1847, furnish any examiner with the full state of the question at that period.
The learned reviewer showed himself acquainted with the subject as it then stood, and with its history in the past. He held that the heart's action, "the contractile power of the cardiac walls," is the main spring or primum mobile, from which the circulating force proceeds, notwithstanding the great discrepancies as to what that force is; and while he objected to my theory, that it did not show any distinct measure of force, he said that, while Borelli estimated the contractive power of the heart at 180,000?pounds, Keill stated it at five ounces, Sir Charles Bell at 51?pounds, Carpenter at 51?, and Hales at 50. He abandoned, however, Harvey's idea that the heart was the only organ of circulation. He believed that it was assisted by the contractile power of the arteries, by the movement of the ribs and chest in respiration, by capillary attraction, muscular contraction in exercise, and several other forces; one of which, the attraction of the venous blood for the pulmonary cells, had been recently pointed out by Dr.?Draper. The author did not suppose he was bringing forward any new truths; "but," said he, as an introduction to his account of my theory, "are we not sometimes in danger of forsaking old truths for new theories?"
Of my theory, he says: "The mere statement of it must satisfy our readers that it is wholly untenable. It is well known that heat is generated in every part of the system as well as the lungs. Whenever oxygen and carbon unite, there it is developed; but it is imparted to the solids equally with the fluids; it maintains the temperature of the whole body by radiations from the points where it is generated." ... "It is believed that all those functions of the organism which are necessary for the preservation of life, contribute directly or indirectly to the production of animal heat; so that it is developed at every point at which metamorphosis is occurring, and therefore not merely in the lungs, but in the whole peripheral system."
The writer then observes, that "the heat of the venous blood as it reaches the right side of the heart (according to Davy), varies only two or three degrees from that of the aorta. Granting, then, that the blood receives three degrees in the lungs, it is very evident that the expansion produced by it would be too small to be appreciable. The cause, then, is insufficient to produce the effects." The writer gives me credit for having ingeniously supported my theory, and then politely bows me out of the department of physiology into my more appropriate sphere of educating girls.
In my reply, this sentence from Cuvier was chosen as a motto: "Respiration is the function essential to the constitution of an animal body; it is that which, in a manner, animalizes it; and we shall see that animals exercise their peculiar functions more completely according as they enjoy greater powers of respiration."[5] My reasoning was