On the specific gravity of different solid parts of the human body.

Date:
[1833?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the specific gravity of different solid parts of the human body. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Dr Davy’s (experiments were performed much sooner after death, and on a greater variety of' bodies, than those of Dr Frick, and are on the whole more suitable for the establishment of the average natural result, as they were made principally on soldiers, or adult males between the ages of ^0 and 40; while Dr Frick’s experiments were performed on two males, one of 25, the other 56, on a female of 79, and on a child dying a^ birth. A considerable part of Dr Frick’s essay is occupied with a description of the kinds of balance he employed in weighing the parts, the specific gravity of which was to be ascertained, and with the construction of a formula for the reduction of the resulting specific w'eights to one temperature, viz. 16° R. or 68° F. Many of his experiments were made with the view of ascer- taining whether there exists any difference in the specific gravity of corresponding parts, taken from opposite sides of the same body. The results show that some such difference does exist, but they are by no means sufficiently constant to entitle us to found upon them any general conclusion. We shall not at present follow the author through these de- tails, but arrange in a Table, which we think may be interest- ing to general readers, the more important results obtained by Davy and Frick. In this Table, those results only which cor- respond most nearly are stated, and many are omitted in which the differences are such that they must be attributed to acciden- tal circumstances, the consideration of which would be foreign to the immediate and important object of the investigation.