you see how white and milky the water is getting, shewing the effect which
expired air has had upon it; and now you begin to know that the atmosphere
which we have spoiled by respiration is spoiled by carbonic acid, for you
see it here in contact with the lime-water.
I have here two bottles, one containing lime-water and the other common
water, and tubes which pass into the bottles and connect them. The
apparatus is very rough, but it is useful notwithstanding.
[Illustration: Fig. 35.]
If I take these two bottles, inhaling here and exhaling there, the
arrangement of the tubes will prevent the air going backwards. The air
coming in will go to my mouth and lungs, and in going out, will pass
through the lime-water, so that I can go on breathing and making an
experiment, very refined in its nature, and very good in its results. You
will observe that the good air has done nothing to the lime-water; in the
other case nothing has come to the lime-water but my respiration, and you
see the difference in the two cases.
Let us now go a little further. What is all this process going on within
us which we cannot do without, either day or night, which is so provided
for by the Author of all things that He has arranged that it shall be
independent of all will? If we restrain our respiration, as we can to a
certain extent, we should destroy ourselves. When we are asleep, the
organs of respiration, and the parts that are associated with them, still
go on with their action so necessary is this process of respiration to
us, this contact of the air with the lungs. I must tell you, in the
briefest possible manner, what this process is. We consume food: the food
goes through that strange set of vessels and organs within us, and is
brought into various parts of the system, into the digestive parts
especially; and alternately the portion which is so changed is carried
through our lungs by one set of vessels, while the air that we inhale and
exhale is drawn into and thrown out of the lungs by another set of
vessels, so that the air and the food come close together, separated only
by an exceedingly thin surface: the air can thus act upon the blood by
this process, producing precisely the same results in kind as we have seen
in the case of the candle. The candle combines with parts of the air,
forming carbonic acid, and evolves heat; so in the lungs there is this
curious, wonderful change taking place. The air entering, combines with
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