The Anatomy of the Human Body Author:John Bell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. V. OF MALCONFORMATIONS OF THE HEART, AND OTHER CAUSES, PREVENTING THE DUE OXYDATION OF THE BLOOD. WE are at no period of life, from the cradle to the... more » grave, exempted from thofe difeafes which prevent the due oxydation of the blood. They often are born with us; they often overtake us when advanced in life ; they caufe an anxiety and mifery, which exceeds all other diftrefs: pain and fuflering of every other kind humanity can bear, but the feeling of initant diffolution Is what the nobleft mind finks under. We know by the pale and fubfiding countenance how awful the inward feelings are, and woe be to him who has not feeling enough to fympathife with this diftrefs, and an anxious dcfire to underftand the caufe, and to alleviate the mifery of inward difeafes which he cannot cure! Thefe are feducing motives, and might of themfelves have drawn me on"to give this flight fketch of the mal- confprmations a.nd difeafes of the heart: but I feel alfo the ftronger motives of duty and ucceffity; for truly, without fome knowledge of the ill organized, irregular, and difeafed heart, the ftructure and functions of the heart in its founder flate would be but poorly under- ftood. This fketch, then, is the laft part of this ana- tomy of the heart. While the following hiflcry ferves to correcl: our notions of the mechanifm of the heart, we muft alfo obr ferve how it explains and illuflrates up to a much higher point the combined functions cf the heart and lungs, viz. the oxydation of the blood. Perhaps nothing can better explain the eflects of a full and healthy oxydation, than a fparing oxydation of the blcod, fuch as produces difeafe. The fcetus alone can live with its fmgle heart; it lives in the womb by its having a heart diflerent from that of an adult. A fcetus, then, being ...« less