foals and calves to cords ftretched near the jourts, and fuffer them to run with their dams only during night. They have observed that the young, brought up thus fparingly, fupport much better the feverity of the winters, than thofe which are indulged with all the mother's milk.

Both fexes wear fhirts, which are ufually of coarse cloth of nettles, long and large drawers, and bufkins or fiippers. A woman's gown is of fine cloth or fill fluff, buttoned before, and tightly bound round the body with a girdle. The neck and breaft are covered with a kind of net, garnished with pieces of money. The Bafchkirs are more grofs, negligent, and flovenly in their manner of living and commerce than the Kafan Tartars, but they are alfo more hofpitable, lively, and joyous, efpecially in fummer. They make no account of carriages, but both men and women love to ride on horfeback, and take pride in fine horfes and rich houfings. The faddles for the women are diftinguished from thofe which the men ufe by handsomer and larger coverings. A faddled horfe is commonly feen before every jourt. The habit which they have contracted of being constantly either on horfeback, or feated on their heels, makes nearly all the men crook-kneed. They fleep at night with their clothes on, lying on felts; whence they are rarely without vermin, efpecially as they use fewer ablutions than other Mohammedans. Old age without reproach is greatly efteemed among them, according to the Oriental cuftom; and, when they invite their friends to a feast, they promise to feat them among the old men.'

Various of the other Tartar tribes are defcribed in a fimilar manner; and curious details of their arts and modes of living, and of the productions of the country, are given; which contribute to render the work inftructive and entertaining.

ART. XVIII. JOHANN ANDREAS SCHERER, M. D. &c. ueber das Einathmen der Lebenfluft, &c. i. e. On the Breathing of Vital Air in long-continued Inflammatory Affections of the Cheft. By JOHN ANDREW SCHERER, M. D. 8vo. Vienna. 1793.

DR. SCHERER is the author of a differtation published fome

time paft, in which he fays that he demonftrates that Mayow, above 100 years ago, laid the foundation of the antiphlogistic theory in chemistry; and it appears that he did not know that Dr. Beddoes had made the fame affertion*. He now writes against Dr. Ferro on the use of vital air in inflammatory difeafes of the cheft.

Since more accurate obfervations have been made on the effect of vital air in refpiration, it has been found that this air is hurtful in inflammatory affections of the lungs. The author, in his late tract relative to Mayow, cautioned phyficians against

See Review, vol. ii. N. S. p. 28.

the

the use of vital air in inflammatory affections of the lungs in confumptions.

Dr. Ferro, in 1793, published, at Vienna, experiments on new medicines, and, among thefe, on vital air: but, fays Dr. S. how astonished was I to find all Dr. F. afferted, to be contrary to fact!' Dr. Ferro placed vital air in the clafs of antiphlogistic remedies. The breathing of this air, fays he, diminishes and carries off the difpofition of the lungs to inflammation; it refolves and difperfes the infpiffated lymph which ftops up the air veficles; it is a principal remedy in tuberculous lungs; it heals fmall ulcerations in the lungs; it diminishes the fever that attends the pulmonary confumption; and it carries off the fhortness of breathing which remains after pulmonic inflammations.

Dr. SCHERER's plan is to give a fhort history of vital air, merely with a view to medicine, up to the prefent time. This will teach us the grounds on which, fome time ago, it was thought that vital air might be employed with advantage in inflammatory and putrid fevers; it will fhew the part which phlogifton has had in the practice of phyfic; that, on account of the revolution in chemistry, the theory of the operation of vital air in the animal functions has taken a different turn; and, laftly, this hiftory will manifeft to us the mifchief which the breathing of vital air in pulmonic inflammations and inflammatory confumptions has occafioned. In 1774, Priestley and Scheele difcovered an aeriform fubftance in the atmosphere, which philofophers and phyficians had long conjectured to exift, and with which Mayow was well acquainted. Animals lived from fix to eight times longer in a given quantity of it, than in an equal bulk of common air; and fubftances burned with fuch a rapidity, and with fo much light, that the fight could fcarcely behold them. Scheele afterward fhewed that this air was a conftituent part of the atmosphere; and this fact raised the highest expectations of advantages to the life and health of The ufe of it in difeafes occurred to mind: but, it was afked, in what difeafes and in what manner muft it be applied, in order to be useful? Dr. Priestley laid the foundation for its ufe in difeafes. In more than one hundred places of his work, he fhewed that this air contained no phlogifton. Among the numerous fubftances chofen to try the effects of this air, was the blood; and this immediately threw light on the nature of refpiration. Lower, in the preceding century, supposed that the bright red colour of the blood was occafioned by the contact of air: but Dr. P. evinced that it was vital air only that reddened the blood; and this, indeed, Mayow had acutely obferved. Dark or dull red blood became, by expofure

men,

to vital air, of a bright red colour; which again, by exposure to unrefpirable air, turned to dark, and alternately red and dark, according to the expofure of it in one or other of thefe two airs. It was concluded that dephlogisticated air carries off phlogiston from the blood, because dephlogisticated air was made worse, and phlogisticated air better, by exposure to blood.

Respiration was then confidered as being a phlogistic operation, like putrefaction, calcination, &c.

Mofcati firft propofed to confider difeafes as arifing from too much or too little phlogifton difcharged from the body: from the former, or phlogifton accumulated, arose inflammatory diseases; from the latter, or too much discharged, arose putrid diseases.

Selle, Ingenhoufz, Landriani, Dolomieu, and Achard, are cited for obfervations and theories on this fubject. At laft, Ferro, in 1783, drew fome conclufions on the respiration of vital air in diseases: but the experience of ten years has inftructed us that in the disease, in which vital air was once fupposed to be useful, it is now found to be injurious.

Next follows the hiftory of vital air after the revolution in chemistry. During the reign of the doctrine of phlogifton, it prevailed over the whole of chemistry, especially over the aerological branch, and in part over the doctrine of vitality: but Lavoifier took a new path; which, indeed, the acute Mayow pointed out in the laft century, in his doctrine of vital air and its influence on organic and inorganic bodies. Since the year 1774, Lavoifier has laboured to expofe the many propofitions which are taken for granted, the equivocal conclufions, the contradictions, and the loofe affertions, in the doctrine of phlogiston. From the action of vital air, he explained all the phenomena referred to the abfence or prefence of phlogifton; and this explanation was especially fupported by Mr. Cavendish's difcovery that water might be compofed by uniting inflammable and vital air, and by the difcovery of M. M. Lavoifier, Meufnier, and De la Place, in 1781, that water might be refolved into these two airs. Dr. Black, Mr. Kirwan, and other great names, adopted the new fyftem; although Gren, Weftrumb, and Wiegleb, adhere to the old doctrine. In this place, however, we are only to confider the vital air as far as relates to medicine. In the calcination of metals, an elaftic fluid remains behind, called azotic gas, as it does after animals have repeatedly breathed in a certain quantity of atmofpheric air; and, in this latter cafe, fixed air remains behind. Fixed air, according to Lavoifier, is compofcd of carbon and oxygene; and fixed air is formed when vital air ftands expofed to blood. Therefore, vital air is changed

by

by refpiration into fixed air; and the azotic air, which was mixed with the vital air, remains behind, being unfit for refpiration. As heat is extricated on the combination of vital air with different fubftances, to form a concrete body, it has been concluded that in this way animal heat is generated by refpiration. Alfo, when vital air, by uniting with carbon, forms fixed air, heat is feparated, becaufe fixed air is a more denfe body than vital air. De la Place found that an animal, during the time in which by breathing it changed a given quantity of vital air into fixed air, difcharges nearly as much heat as the vital air fo changed contains. Lavoisier concludes that, in the lungs, a part of the bafis of vital air combines with the bafis of inflammable air, and produces the watery vapours which appear in respired air. As the heat of vital air unites to the blood, and produces animal heat, this heat will be produced fo long as the animal breathes. To remove some objections, M. M. De la Place and Haffenfratz have fhewn that a part of the vital air unites with the blood during the circulation.

On the Action of Vital Air on the Lungs in the Office of Refpi

ration.

In the last century, Lower obferved that the blood in the veins of the lungs is of a brighter red colour than the blood of the arteries of the lungs,-fo long as the animal breathes :— but, as foon as it ceases to breathe, the blood of the veins alfo becomes dark coloured; and therefore he imputed the red colour of the blood to the mixture of air in the lungs. Cigna and Beccaria confirmed this conclufion, in 1759, by experiments with animals under the air pump: but Dr. Priestley has fince made many new experiments, proving the fame thing.

Dr. P.'s experiments evince that the vital air of the atmospheric air produces the red colour of blood, and that one portion. unites with the carbon to form fixed air, and another portion with the blood itfelf. It is the portion united to the blood which produces the red colour: but, as foon as it unites with the carbon of the blood, or, as fome alledge, with the hydrogene of the blood, to produce fixed air and water, the blood becomes dark coloured.

In whatever manner the action of the blood is confidered, it appears certain that the vital air only is abfolutely neceflary to life; that the venous blood in the lungs of a breathing animal is of a bright red colour; that the lungs difcharge fixed air, and that they deftroy or abforb vital air. Thefe changes must. furely be of confiderable moment to the animal economy. Dr. Goodwyn, by removing the fternum of dogs, had ocular proof that, on blowing air (especially vital air,) into the

lungs,

lungs, the venous blood of the lungs was red, and the arterial blood of the lungs was dark coloured: but, in a minute's time, (without applying air,) the blood was of the fame colour in both fets of vellels. He alfo found that the pulfe grew weaker, the oftener an animal breathed in the fame air. The influence of vital air on the action of the heart had been fhewn long ago by Mayow. To extract foul or unrefpirable air already in the lungs, and then to fill them with vital air, the most proper inftrument is that of Gorcy, defcribed in Gren's Journal.

The fenfation of heat in the breaft in phthifical cafes, felt throughout all the limbs when the patients breathe vital air, fhews that the vital air produces great changes in the lungs, and, from them, on the rest of the body. As the effects of vital air are to carry off carbon and hydrogene, and to produce heat, it is of great confequence to confider its action: as must be perceived on reading Fourcroy's account of the effects of vital air, Annales de Chimie, 1790, T. 4. p. 80. Breathing of vital air has never been found uteful in inflammations of the breaft; and people who, in confumptions, thought themselves at first relieved, afterward were found to have their death accelerated by vital air in ventos vita receffit: Virgil. Chaptal has also given an account of the effects of vital air in confumptions, which are not much in its favour: for it increases inflammation. In another chapter, the author gives his Obfervations on Cafes of Confumptions in which Vital Air has been breathed.

He makes an abstract from Fourcroy's paper in 1789, which contains an account of the trial of vital air in twenty cafes of pulmonary confumption.

M. Fourcroy concluded that vital air, fo far from being a remedy, was hurtful in pulmonary confumptions; and he next inquired whether, in other difeafes, it might not be useful. It promised to be a remedy, becaufe it is fully afcertained that life depends on it, and that it produces confiderable heat in the lungs and conftitution. He found it, accordingly, very ufeful in fcrophulous cafes; in moift, cold, and chronical afthmas, &c.

Dr. Ingenhoufz's obfervations are next quoted, on the effects of vital air, as ftated in the Journal de Phyfique, 1791. The Doctor will not believe that vital air difcuffes tubercles, removes fhortness of breath remaining after inflammation, and heals ulcers, fo long as we are ignorant of the cafes, and know not whether fuch difeafed ftates are prefent or not; and especially as we know that vital air infpiffates the lymph. In all cafes, fever and heat have been increafed by vital air, and death has been accelerated.

Το