| Title: | Effervescence |
| Original Title: | Effervescence |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 5 (1755), p. 405 |
| Author: | Arnulphe d'Aumont (biography) |
| Translator: | Samantha Schaeffer [University of Michigan] |
| Subject terms: |
Medicine
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.124 |
| Citation (MLA): | d'Aumont, Arnulphe. "Effervescence." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Samantha Schaeffer. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2015. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.124>. Trans. of "Effervescence," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 5. Paris, 1755. |
| Citation (Chicago): | d'Aumont, Arnulphe. "Effervescence." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Samantha Schaeffer. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.124 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Effervescence," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 5:405 (Paris, 1755). |
Effervescence is a term also used by certain doctors to signify an internal movement that they suppose in the humors of the human body, as, for example, that which is produced by mixing two liquids, of which one is acid and the other alkaline. [1] No such movement exists in the animal economy, [2] which can be demonstrated a priori , because there is nothing in us that can cause an effervescence . There is in our body neither any acid salt, nor any lixiviated salt, the combination of which could produce such an effect; [3] experience confirms this: because the blood that spreads through a body, whose head has just been cut off, or which flows from an open artery, collected in a vase, does not give any mark of internal movement particular to it, it appears without any noticeable agitation in any of its parts. However it is accepted by everyone, that the movement of effervescence is by its nature to be susceptible to the senses . See Les Préleçons sur les instituts of Boerhaave and Haller’s notes, § 176 , from which this article is extracted. [4]
Notes
1. The doctors to whom D’Aumont refers here refers were the vitalists, some of whom contributed to the Encyclopédie : Ménuret de Chambaud (1733–1815), Henri Fouquet (1727–1806), and the Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704–79). http://philippehuneman.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/huneman.pdf (accessed April 3, 2014). The four humors were the metabolic agents of the four elements in the human body. Vital fluids are associated with universal elements: blood-air, phlegm-water, yellow bile-fire, black bile-earth.
2. “Animal economy” is a key concept in eighteenth-century vitalism. It is based on the theory that the human body is animated by a life force. http://philippehuneman.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/huneman.pdf (accessed April 3, 2014).
3. Lixiviate salts are alkaline, and thus the opposite of acid salts. See the definition in http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lixiviate (accessed April 3, 2014).
4. The reference is to a work by the Dutch botanist and physician, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), Praelectiones academicae in proprias Institutiones rei medicae edidit, with notes by Albertus Haller (Taurini, 1742-45).