5thly. If the black blood be not an excitant to the heart, it can only want such power, because it contains more carbon and hydrogen, than the red blood;[83] but if the heart of an animal, which has been killed expressly for the experiment, by lesion of the brain or of the lungs, has ceased to beat, it may, notwithstanding, be made to contract as long as it preserves its irritability, by throwing into the aortic ventricle either hydrogen gas, or carbonic acid gas. It follows, that neither hydrogen gas nor carbon can act as sedatives to the heart.
The experiments which I made and published last year, on the emphysemata, produced in different animals with these gases, have established the same truth with respect to the muscles, since they do not cease to move in consequence of such experiments, and after death, preserve their irritability as they usually do.
Lastly. I have often succeeded in re-establishing the contractions of the heart, which have been annihilated in different sorts of violent death, by the injection of black blood into the red-blooded cavities, with a syringe adapted to one of the pulmonary veins.
Thus it is proved, that the red-blooded heart does actually push the black blood into all parts of the body; and in this way is the colour given to the different surfaces, of which, in one of the following chapters, I shall offer a sketch.
Neither does the simple presence of the black blood act in a more sedative way upon the internal surfaces of the arteries.[84] If, in fact, while the tube adapted to the trachea is shut, the blood be made to flow from an artery of the foot, it will be thrown out for some time, with the same force which it would have been, were the pipe to be open. The action, then, which it exercises in its passage from the heart, upon the parietes of the arteries, does not diminish the energy of these parietes. When this energy decreases, it is at least in part from a different cause.
From the above experiments we may conclude, that the black blood arriving in mass at the red-blooded ventricle, and correspondent arterial system is able, from its sole contact with them, to occasion the action of these cavities; we may be equally certain, that were not the functions of these parts suppressed from other causes, the circulation would continue to be made in a very sensible manner, at least, if not with force.