The injection of blood with circular corpuscules into the vessels of a bird (in which the corpuscules are elliptic and of a larger size) produces violent symptoms similar to those of the strongest poisons, and generally death, which ensues indeed instantaneously, even when a small quantity only of the blood has been injected. Such, for example, was the effect of the transfusion of some blood of the sheep into the veins of a duck; while in many cases in which the blood of sheep and oxen were injected into the vessels of cats and rabbits, these animals were revived for a few days. The fact of the blood of mammalia being poisonous to birds is very remarkable; it cannot be explained mechanically. The injection of fluids containing globules of greater diameter than the capillary vessels of the injected animal most probably produces death, by obstructing the pulmonary vessels and producing suffocation; but the globules of the blood in mammalia are even smaller than those of birds. In Dieffenbach’s experiments, pigeons were killed by a few drops only of the blood of mammalia, and the blood of fishes, it is asserted, is as fatal to mammalia as to birds.
These interesting facts have been confirmed by Dr. Bischoff. In all his experiments made with the fresh blood of mammalia, birds died within a few seconds after the transfusion, with violent symptoms resembling those of poisoning; but when, instead of the fresh unchanged blood, he injected blood from which the fibrin had been removed by stirring, and which was heated to a proper temperature, he was surprised to find that no such symptoms were produced, the animal not appearing to suffer any inconvenience.
It seems indeed from these experiments, that the blood of an animal of a different class, is not adapted for the operation.
When transfusion was first proposed in France, it met with furious opponents; and Lamartinière declared that it was a barbarous operation proceeding from Satan’s workshop. The controversy between the transfusers and their adversaries was at length carried on with such virulence, that in 1668 the practice was forbidden by a decree of the Châtelet, unless the operation had been sanctioned by the faculty of Paris. In Italy it continued to be in vogue. Riva and Manfredi frequently performed it; and a physician of the name of Simboldus submitted himself to the experiment. According to the accounts given by the patients who had been thus injected, they first experienced an increased heat with violent pulsation, profuse perspiration with pains in the loins and stomach, and a sense of suffocation. Violent vomiting frequently arose, and the patient gradually sank into a torpid and heavy sleep. Whatever may be the theoretical ingenuity in favour of this practice, it is not probable that it will ever be adopted.
While young blood was thus supposed to give fresh vigour to the aged, the heat communicated by young persons to debilitated bedfellows was also resorted to. This practice seems to have been founded on observation. It is an acknowledged fact that an uncommon depression of vital power takes place in the young when such experiments are tried. This abstraction of vital power is frequently observed in young females married to very old men. In illustration of this fact, Dr. Copeland relates the following case: “I was a few years since consulted about a pale, sickly, and thin boy of about five or six years of age. He appeared to have no specific ailment; but there was a slow and remarkable decline of flesh and strength, and of the energy of all the functions,—what his mother very aptly termed ‘a gradual blight.’ After inquiring into the history of the case, it came out that he had been a very robust and plethoric child up to his third year, when his grandmother, a very aged person, took him to sleep with her; that he soon afterwards lost his good looks, and that he had continued to decline progressively ever since, notwithstanding medical treatment. I directed him to sleep apart from his aged parent, and prescribed gentle tonics, change of air, &c., and the recovery was very rapid.”
This selfish indulgence of the aged in endeavouring to deprive their young bedfellows of heat and strength has been often remarked; and young women thus circumstanced have shrewdly suspected the cause of their debilitated condition. It is extremely probable that in these cases electricity is conducted from one body to another. This hypothesis is in some degree confirmed by the experiments made upon Casper Hauser by Von Feuerbach. This Casper Hauser had been kept from infancy until he was eighteen years of age in a perfectly dark cage, without leaving it, and where he never saw a living creature or heard the voice of man. He was restricted from using his limbs, his voice, his hands, or senses; and his food consisted of bread and water only, which he found placed by him when wakening from his sleep. When exposed in Nuremberg, in 1828, he was consequently at eighteen years as if just come into the world, and as incapable of walking, discerning objects, or conveying his impressions, as a newly born infant. These faculties, however, he soon acquired; and he was placed under an able instructor, who has recorded his singular history. Darkness had been to him twilight. The light of day was at first insupportable, inflamed his eyes, and brought on spasms. Substances, the odour of which could not be perceived by others, produced severe effects upon him. The smell of a glass of wine, even at a distance, occasioned headache; of fresh meat, sickness; and of flowers, a painful sensation. Passing by a churchyard with Dr. Daumer, the smell of dead bodies, although altogether imperceptible to the doctor, affected the young man so powerfully as to occasion shudderings, followed by feverish heat, terminating in a violent perspiration. He retained a great aversion, owing to their disagreeable taste and smell, to all kinds of food excepting bread and water.
When the north pole of a small magnet was held towards him, he described a drawing sensation proceeding outwards from the epigastrium, and as if a current of air went from him. The south pole affected him less, and he said it blew upon him. Professor Daumer and Hermann made several experiments of the kind, calculated to deceive him, and, even although the magnet was held at a considerable distance from him, his feelings always told him very correctly. These experiments always occasioned perspiration and a feeling of indisposition. He could detect metals placed under oil-cloths, paper, &c. by the sensation they occasioned. He described these sensations as a drawing, accompanied with a chill, which ascended, according to the metal, more or less up the arm, and attended with other distinctive feelings, the veins of the hand exposed to the metal becoming visibly swollen.
The variety and multitude of objects which at once came rushing upon his attention when he thus suddenly came into existence, the unaccustomed impressions of light, free air, and sense, and his anxiety to comprehend them, were too much for his weak frame and acute senses: he became dejected and enfeebled, and his nervous system morbidly elevated. He was subject to spasms and tremors, so that partial exclusion from external excitements became for a time requisite. After he had learned regularly to eat meat, his mental activity was diminished; his eyes lost their brilliancy and expression; the intense application and activity of his mind gave way to absence or indifference, and the quickness of apprehension became diminished. It may be questioned whether this alteration proceeded from the change of diet, or the painful excess of excitement that had preceded it.
Among the various doctrines regarding the creation of animals, that of Panspermia was most ingenious and attractive. According to this theory, maintained by Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, all bodies contained the germ or the organic molecules necessary for their generation. Hippocrates favoured this idea, as plainly appears in his book de Diætâ; and in modern times Perrault, Gésik, Wollaston, Sturm, and other physiologists, have endeavoured to revive the doctrine, of which the organic molecules of Buffon and the living molecules of Ray were merely modifications. The expression in Genesis which sanctions the belief that the earth spontaneously germinated its productions, cannot be referred to the animal kingdom. Were this the case, similar animals would be found in every quarter of the globe. Spontaneous generation was also attributed to putrefaction; and Virgil describes the manner in which Aristæus drew forth a swarm of bees from the corrupted entrails of a heifer. Pliny admits the spontaneous creation of rats, mice, frogs, and other small tribes of animals. These errors, however, were soon dispelled by the light thrown on the subject by the microscopic experiments of Valisnéri, Swammerdam, Réaumur, and many other naturalists, who discovered sexual organs in all these supposed self-created individuals.
This doctrine was the foundation of the classification of the generative principle into equivocal and univocal generations,—the former the effect of putrefaction, but which in reality was univocal, since it was soon ascertained that this production arose from the incubation of numerous eggs deposited by various insects and animalculi in these corrupted bodies. The following experiment afforded a convincing proof of the fact: A piece of meat was placed in an open vessel, and another in a vase hermetically closed; so soon as these animal substances entered into decomposition, myriads of insects pullulated in the exposed meat, whereas that which was protected from external agency remained free from this invasion.