Abstract
THE discovery by Harvey of the circulation of the blood, and of the part played by the heart in carrying on this circulation, is one of the few scientific discoveries which have become common knowledge. We have to think of the body as a collection of mechanisms or machines, each one of which is doing some form of work for one common end—i.e. the preservation of the body. For this work the oxidation of the food taken in at intervals during the day provides the energy; thus each part of the body must be supplied not only with food derived from the alimentary canal, but also with the oxygen taken in with the air we breathe into the lungs. Like any other machine, each body mechanism produces, as a result of this consumption of the food, waste gases and other waste products which have to be carried to the lungs or to the kidneys and there cleared out of the body. It is for this reason that the existence of the higher animal demands a common fluid, the blood, which can carry food, oxygen or carbonic acid, and is maintained in continual circulation between all the organs of the body, so that the alimentary canal, for instance, may serve for the maintenance of all parts, and the lungs can supply oxygen to these parts or excrete the carbonic acid which is produced as a result of their activity.
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STARLING, E. The Law of the Heart1. Nature 109, 13–15 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109013a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109013a0