- cumstances, he found the proportion as 1 to 70. On
examining an infant, born at the full period, and which had respired, the proportion was found to be as 2 to 70, so that the weight of the lungs was absolutely doubled by the act of respiration.
It would be a loss of time to enumerate the different objections which have been urged against the validity of this test, on various grounds, many of which admit of an easy answer. It is sufficient to state that experiments, subsequent to those of Plouquet, by Haartman,[1] Struve,[2] Schmitt, and Lecieux,[3] have shewn that no constant relation between the weight of the lungs and that of the body, under the circumstances above mentioned, can be established. The reason of which, as Dr. Hutchinson has justly observed, without considering the influence of variation in the original construction of the body, is sufficiently accounted for, by the great diversity in the manner in which respiration is established in new-born infants. We have already stated that, in a great proportion of them, it is but gradually and slowly effected; and that several days even may elapse before the lungs are fully dilated. Dr. Gordon Smith[4] is disposed to believe that data might be obtained for a just conclusion upon this point, if practitioners would institute farther inquiry into the subject; and, with this impression, he has been induced to enter more
- ↑ Stockholm, Acad. Hand. t. xx, p. 40.
- ↑ Dissert. de Docimas. Pulm. Ploucq.
- ↑ This author relates the results of four hundred examinations of bodies of children made at the Hospice de la Maternité at Paris, for the purpose of furnishing some evidence on this subject, and the results of them are almost as various as it was possible for them to have been, within a certain range.
- ↑ Principles of forensic medicine, p. 336.
