Unpublished paper, 'On the influence of the respiratory organs in regulating the quantity of blood within the heart' by James Wardrop

Description

Wardrop observes that the act of breathing in tends to favour the passage of the blood into the venae cavae and also to detain it in the pulmonary vessels as a result of the expansion of the lungs, allowing for its more ready flowing into the pulmonary arteries, and impeding its exit by the veins, thus slowing its return to the heart. He goes on to explain the influence exerted on the circulation and on the heart by various modes of voluntary and involuntary respiration. He considers laughter, crying, weeping, sobbing and sighing as efforts made with a view to alter the quantity of blood in the lungs and heart when the circulation has been disturbed by mental emotions. Marked as 'not to be printed' by Peter Mark Roget.

Subject: Physiology / Respiration

Received 17 June 1835. Read 18 June 1835. Communicated by Frederick de Roos.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 3 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'On the influence of the respiratory organs in regulating the quantity of blood within the heart'.

Reference number

AP/19/23

Earliest possible date

1835

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

38 pages

Format

Manuscript