The vital part of the tissues, built up from the complex classes of food, is oxidized by means of the oxygen carried by the arterial blood, and broken down into simpler bodies which at last result in urea, carbon dioxid, and water.  Wherever there is life, this process of oxidation is going on, but more energetically in some tissues and organs than in others.  In other words, the minutest tissue in the body is a source of heat in proportion to the activity of its chemical changes.  The more active the changes, the greater is the heat produced, and the greater the amount of urea, carbon dioxid, and water eliminated.  The waste caused by this oxidation must be made good by a due supply of food to be built up into protoplasmic material.  For the production of heat, therefore, food is necessary.  But the oxidation process is not as simple and direct as the statement of it might seem to indicate.  Though complicated in its various stages, the ultimate result is as simple as in ordinary combustion outside of the body, and the products are the same.

The continual chemical changes, then, chiefly by oxidation of combustible materials in the tissues, produce an amount of heat which is efficient to maintain the temperature of the living body at about 98-1/2 degrees F. This process of oxidation provides not only for the heat of the body, but also for the energy required to carry on the muscular work of the animal organism.

225.  Regulation of the Bodily Temperature.  While bodily heat is being continually produced, it is also as continually being lost by the lungs, by the skin, and to some extent, by certain excretions.  The blood, in its swiftly flowing current, carries warmth from the tissues where heat is being rapidly generated, to the tissues or organs in which it is being lost by radiation, conduction, or evaporation.  Were there no arrangement by which heat could be distributed and regulated, the temperature of the body would be very unequal in different parts, and would vary at different times.

The normal temperature is maintained with slight variations throughout life.  Indeed a change of more than a degree above or below the average, indicates some failure in the organism, or some unusual influence.  It is evident, then, that the mechanisms which regulate the temperature of the body must be exceedingly sensitive.

The two chief means of regulating the temperature of the body are the lungs and the skin.  As a means of lowering the temperature, the lungs and air passages are very inferior to the skin; although, by giving heat to the air we breathe, they stand next to the skin in importance.  As a regulating power they are altogether subordinate to the skin.