Thus must caloric be imparted to the blood in the lungs;
and in them is one-fifth of the blood of the system, of which
seven-eighths is water.
The nature of heat is to expand all fluids. The blood in the lungs must,
therefore, expand; and if it expands, it must move; and if it moves, it
must, from the organism of the parts, move to the left ventricle of the
heart, into which the valvular system opens to give it a free
passage--whereas the valves of the right close against it. "Eureka!" I
mentally exclaimed; "I have found the _primum mobile_ of the circulation
of the blood." I had for years disbelieved that the heart's slight
mechanical impulse was that cause. In teaching Paley's "Natural
Theology," my mind had come in contact with the passage in which he
describes the heart's more than Herculean labors; and I said, "This is
altogether too much--the heart alone cannot perform all this--there must
be some other power," and an abiding desire to know what that power
could be, prepared me for receiving this great idea. But my mind was
agitated by it, as the sea is, when a great rock is thrown into its
waters.
The cholera was then raging around me; and as I prepared to flee from it
to a mountain air, I confided to a scientific friend, Professor Twiss of
West Point, my hypothesis, which I regarded as probably the incipient
germ of an important discovery.
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