Unpublished paper, 'On galvanic currents existing in the blood' by James Newton Heale

Description

Heale endeavours to prove that motion of a fluid in a certain definite circle constitutes the first link in the chain of causes by which vitality is perfected; that all the other phenomena of living structure are supplementary and superinduced upon this primary and indispensable condition; and that, although it might be possible to maintain this primary circulation under certain circumstances, even though all the other functions of life were suspended or destroyed, they, on the contrary, cannot exist independently of that circulation. He shows it to be necessary to circulation, that two fluids, or a fluid in two different states, should communicate by two points or extremities with each other, and that these extremities should present such a resistance to their mutual connection and mixing, that the transfer of conditions of each, from one to the other, must take place, otherwise the uniformity of both would speedily put an end to the process; and it is indicated that the forces in operation in these two places would be reverse to each other; in the one it would be from arterial to venous, and in the other from venous to arterial.

Annotations in pencil and ink throughout.

Subject: Medicine / Haematology / Electricity

Received 24 January 1848. Withdrawn 4 May 1848. Communicated by P M [Peter Mark] Roget.

Written by Heale at 11 Westbourne Crescent, Hyde Park [London].

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 'On galvanic currents existing in the blood'.

Reference number

AP/30/4

Earliest possible date

January 1848

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

29 pages

Format

Manuscript