Experiences sur le principe de la vie
Publisher Information: Paris: D'Hautel, 1812.
Le Gallois, Jean Julien César (1770-1814). Expériences sur le principe de la vie, notamment sur celui des mouvemens du coeur, et sur le siège de ce principe . . . 8vo. [6], xxiv, 364, [2, errata]pp. Folding engraved plate. Paris: Chez d’Hautel, 1812. 192 x 124 mm. Paste paper boards ca. 1812, light wear, label with title in manuscript pasted to spine. Minor occasional spotting, but very good.
First Edition. Le Gallois conducted a series of physiological experiments exploring the mechanism of respiration, in which he determined that respiration is controlled by a respiratory center in the medulla oblongata—the first time that “an area of brain substance . . . having a specific function had been defined accurately by experiment” (Clarke and Jacyna, Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts, p. 246). Le Gallois also developed a primitive isolated heart-lung preparation in rabbits (illustrated in the plate to the present work), and was the first to suggest the possibility of a heart-lung machine: “If the place of the heart could be supplied by injection, and if, for the regular continuance of this injection, there could be furnished a quantity of arterial blood, whether natural or artificially formed . . . then life might be indefinitely maintained” (quoted in Fye, p. 599). Garrison-Morton.com 928. Fye, “Julien Jean César Legallois,” Clinical Cardiology 18 (1995): 599-600.
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