The Guinea Pig as Internal Combustion Engine

FIGURE 212. Ice calorimeter, designed by Lavoisier and the famous mathematician Laplace. Heat was defined in units of ice melted. The idea that metabolism was similar to combustion derived from the knowledge that oxygen was required, carbon dioxide and water produced and heat generated by animals. Thus, Lavoisier realized that combustion, calcination and metabolism were all related in the sense that each involved combination with oxygen. 

Benjamin Franklin Self Revealed, Second Revised Edition, Vol. I, Putnam, New York, 1923, pp. 106-107. I thank Professor Roald Hoffmann for bringing this material to my attention and Professor Susan Gardner for suggesting homage to mice. 

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