Zoonomia Part 1 Volume 2 By Erasmus Darwin The arterial system consists of the aortal and the pulmonary artery, which are attended through their whole course with their correspondent veins. The pulmonary artery receives the blood from the right chamber of the heart, and carries it to the minute extensive ramifications of the lungs, where it is exposed to the action of the air on a surface equal to that of the whole external skin, through the thin moist coats of those vessels, which are spread on the air-cells, which constitute the minute terminal ramifications of the wind-pipe. Here the blood changes its colour from a dark red to a bright scarlet. It is then collected by the branches of the pulmonary vein, and conveyed to the left chamber of the heart.
Erasmus Darwin was an English physiologist and poet. He was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. He practiced medicine most of his life. His chief poetic work was The Botanic Garden (1789 - 1792), a long poem, stilted in expression but showing enthusiasm for science and nature. His prose work Zoonomia (1794 - 1796) anticipated some of the evolutionary theories of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck but was intuitive and unscientific. Darwin was the grandfather of the British scientists Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton.