Abstract
ONE at least of the “obvious difficulties” which your correspondent, Mr. Henry R. Proctor, finds in my hypothesis as to the origin of Nerve Force, would scarcely have existed if he had directed his attention to a sentence in my article (NATURE, July 31), which runs thus: “In what are termed hot-blooded animals, that is, in mammals and birds, the difference of temperature between the surface and the interior is considerable under all natural circumstances, and in them there is a regulating action of the skin by which they maintain a uniform internal temperature, always hotter than the surface, whatever that of the external medium may be.” The correctness of this proposition as regards the human being is now a physiological fact, as many observers from different starting points have arrived at the same conclusion; among others, my proof of it has appeared in the “Journal of Anatomy and Physiology” (vol. vi. November 1871). When the temperature of the atmosphere is above 70° F. the amount of perspiration is always proportionate to the temperature, and is sufficient to maintain the depths of the body at 98° or so. Below 70° the same condition results from the influence of cold on the cutaneous vessels, they contracting in proportion to the degree of cold, and so modifying the radiating and conducting power of the body surface. There is never therefore any reversal of the current, or a temperature at which it is nil.
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GARROD, A. The Origin of Nerve Force. Nature 8, 362 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/008362a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/008362a0
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