Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/137



This Noble Experiment came not to the Publisher's hands, till all the preceding Particulars were already sent to the Press, and almost all Printed off, (for which cause also it could not be mentioned among the Contents'': (And it might have been reserved for the next opportunity, had not the considerableness thereof been a motive to hasten its Publication. It shall be here annexed in the Ingenious Author his own words, as he presented it to the ''Royal Society, October. 24. 1667. the Experiment it self having been both repeated (after a former successful trial of it, made by the same hand a good while agoe) and improved the week before, at their publick Assembly''. The Relation it self follows;''

Did heretofore give this Illustrius Society an account of an Experiment I formerly tryed of keeping a Dog alive after his Thorax was all display'd by the cutting away of the Ribs and Diaphragme; and after the Pericardium of the Heart also was taken off. But divers persons seeming to doubt of the certainty of the Experiment (by reason that some Tryals of this matter, made by some other hands, failed of success) I caus'd at the last Meeting the same Experiment to be shewn in the presence of this Noble Company, and that with the same success, as it had been made by me at first, the Dog being kept alive by the Reciprocal blowing up of his Lungs with Bellowes, and they suffered to subside, for the space of an hour or more, after his Thorax had been so display'd, and his Aspera arteria cut off just below the Epigolotis, and bound on upon the nose of the Bellows.

And because some Eminent Physicians had affirm'd, that the Motion of the Lungs was necssary to Life upon the account of promoting the Circulation of the Blood, and that it was conceiv'd, the Animal would immediately be suffocated as soon as the Lungs should cease to be moved, I did (the better to fortifie my own Hyphothesis of this matter, and to be the better able to Judge of several others) make the following additional Experiment; viz.

The Dog having been kept alive, (as I have now mentioned) for above an hour, in which time the Tryal hath often been repeated, in suffering the dog to fall into Convulsive motions by ceasing to blow the Bellows, and permitting the Lungs to subside and lye still, and of suddenly reviving him again by renewing the blast, and consequently the motion of the Lungs: This I say, having been done, and the Judicious Spectators fully satisfied of the reality of the former Experiment; I caused another pair of Bellows to be immediately joyn'd to the first by a contrivance, I had prepar'd, and pricking all the outercoat of the Lungs with the slender point of a very sharp pen-knive, this second pair