Unpublished paper, 'Experimental evidence in support of the secretion of carbon by animals' by Robert Rigg

Description

Rigg finds that the mean of the results of different experimentalists as to the quantity of carbon excreted by respiration from adults, during twenty-four hours, is 5963 grains; whereas the weight of the carbon contained in the whole of the food, both solid and liquid, received into the body during the same period, as ascertained by the analysis of each article of diet, made by the author, falls very short of that quantity; varying in different cases from 3002 to 4800 grains. The same inference is drawn from experiments made on a mouse, weighing 181 grains, confined in a wire trap for twenty-eight days; during which time it consumed food containing 544.5 grains of carbon, and gave out, in the respired air, 741.2 grains of carbon, being 196.7 grains more than it had received; and it had also gained in absolute weight 27 grains. The conclusion which the author deduces from these experiments is, that carbon is actually formed or secreted by animals.

Marked on back as 'Archives 13 June 1844 S H C [Samuel Hunter Christie]'.

Subject: Biology / Zoology

Received 28 March 1844.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 5 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'Experimental evidence in support of the secretion of carbon by animals'.

Reference number

AP/27/8

Earliest possible date

March 1844

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

15 pages

Format

Manuscript