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Test Bank for Priorities in Critical Care

Nursing, 7th Edition, Linda D. Urden


Kathleen M. Stacy Mary E. Lough
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Linda D. Urden Kathleen M. Stacy Mary E. Lough
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Description
 Evidence-based approach offers the most accurate and timely patient care
recommendations based on the latest and most authoritative research, meta-analyses,
and systematic reviews available.
 UNIQUE! Nursing Diagnosis Priorities boxes list the most urgent potential nursing
diagnoses, with a page reference to the corresponding Nursing Management Plan.
 Nursing Management Plans provide a complete care plan for every Priority Diagnosis
that includes the diagnosis, definition, defining characteristics, outcome criteria, nursing
interventions, and rationales.
 Case studies with critical thinking questions test your understanding of key concepts and
their practical applications.
 Concept maps help students understand common critical health conditions, including
acute coronary syndrome, acute renal failure, ischemic stroke, and shock.
 Collaborative Management boxes guide you through the management of a wide variety
of disorders.
 Patient Education boxes list the concepts that must be taught to the patient and the
family before discharge from the ICU.
 Priority Medication boxes offer a foundation in the pharmacology used most in critical
care.
 NEW! QSEN Evidence-Based Practice boxes use the PICOT framework to cover a timely
topic and the research that underlies current patient care.
 NEW! TEACH for Nurses manual includes unique case studies, outlines, instructor
resources, student resources, answer keys, and more.
 NEW! PowerPoint slides with unfolding case studies have been updated to include
interactive questions and sample handoff information in the ISBARR format for
appropriate chapters.
 NEW! Cultural Competency boxes provide information on basic cultural topics, including
what cues to watch for and how to better provide culturally competent care.
 NEW! QSEN Teamwork and Collaboration boxes offer concise guidelines for effective
handoffs, assessments, and communications between nurses and other hospital staff.
 NEW! QSEN Patient Safety Alert boxes highlight important guidelines and tips to ensure
patient safety.
 NEW! QSEN Internet Resources boxes identify key organizations and websites for both
general critical care practice and for each specific body system.
 NEW! Key points at the end of each chapter offer a quick study tool for students.
 NEW! More-detailed objectives now include every disorder covered in the chapter.
 NEW! Digital glossary on the Evolve companion site help to increase students’ critical
care nursing vocabulary.

Table of Contents
Unit One: FOUNDATIONS IN CRITICAL CARE NURSING
1. Caring for the Critically Ill Patient
2. Ethical and Legal Issues
3. Patient and Family Education
Unit Two: COMMON PROBLEMS IN CRITICAL CARE
4. Psychosocial Alterations
5. Sleep Alterations
6. Nutritional Alterations
7. Gerontological Alterations
8. Pain and Pain Management
9. Sedation and Delirium Management
10. End-of-Life Care
Unit Three: CARDIOVASCULAR ALTERATIONS
11. Cardiovascular Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
12. Cardiovascular Disorders
13. Cardiovascular Therapeutic Management
Unit Four: PULMONARY ALTERATIONS
14. Pulmonary Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
15. Pulmonary Disorders
16. Pulmonary Therapeutic Management
Unit Five
NEUROLOGICAL ALTERATIONS
17. Neurological Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
18. Neurologic Disorders and Therapeutic Management
Unit Six: KIDNEY ALTERATIONS
19. Kidney Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
20. Kidney Disorders and Therapeutic Management
Unit Seven: GASTROINTESTINAL ALTERATIONS
21. Gastrointestinal Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
22. Gastrointestinal Disorders and Therapeutic Management
Unit Eight: ENDOCRINE ALTERATIONS
23. Endocrine Clinical Assessment and Diagnostic Procedures
24. Endocrine Disorders and Therapeutic Management
Unit Nine: MULTISYSTEM ALTERATIONS
25. Trauma
26. Shock, Sepsis, and Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome
27. Hematological Disorders and Oncological Emergencies
Appendix A. Nursing Management Plans of Care
Appendix B. Physiologic Formulas for Critical Care
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published at Paris in 1671, had obtained a firm hold on the University
in less than twenty years. Nor is there any attempt made in Clarke’s
notes to conceal the novelty of Newton’s discoveries, but on the
contrary, admiration is claimed for them as new.

The promptitude with which the Mathematicians of the University


of Cambridge adopted the best parts of the mechanical philosophy of
Descartes, and the greater philosophy of Newton, in the seventeenth
century, has been paralleled in our own times, in the promptitude
with which they have adopted and followed into their consequences
the Mathematical Theory of Heat of Fourier and Laplace, and the
Undulatory Theory of Light of Young and Fresnel.

In Newton’s College, we possess, besides the memorials of him


mentioned above (which include two locks of his silver-white hair), a
paper in his own handwriting, describing the preparatory reading
which was necessary in order that our College students might be
able to read the Principia. I have printed this paper in the Preface to
my Edition of the First Three Sections of the Principia in the original
Latin (1846).

Bentley, who had expressed his admiration for Newton in his


Boyle’s Lectures in 1692, was made Master of the College in 1699,
as I have stated; and partly, no doubt, in consequence of the
Newtonian sermons which he had preached. In his administration of
the College, he zealously stimulated and assisted the exertions of
Cotes, Whiston, and other disciples of Newton. Smith, Bentley’s
successor as Master of 426 the College, erected a statue of Newton
in the College Chapel (a noble work of Roubiliac), with the
inscription, Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.]
At Oxford, David Gregory and Halley, both zealous and
distinguished disciples of Newton, obtained the Savilian
professorships of astronomy and geometry in 1691 and 1703.

David Gregory’s Astronomiæ Physicæ et Geometricæ Elementa


issued from the Oxford Press in 1702. The author, in the first
sentence of the Preface, states his object to be to explain the
mechanics of the universe (Physica Cœlestis), which Isaac Newton,
the Prince of Geometers, has carried to a point of elevation which all
look up to with admiration. And this design is executed by a full
exposition of the Newtonian doctrines and their results. Keill, a pupil
of Gregory, followed his tutor to Oxford, and taught the Newtonian
philosophy there in 1700, being then Deputy Sedleian Professor. He
illustrated his lectures by experiments, and published an Introduction
to the Principia which is not out of use even yet.

In Scotland, the Newtonian philosophy was accepted with great


alacrity, as appears by the instances of David Gregory and Keill.
David Gregory was professor at Edinburgh before he removed to
Oxford, and was succeeded there by his brother James. The latter
had, as early as 1690, printed a thesis, containing in twenty-two
propositions, a compend of Newton’s Principia. 56 Probably these
were intended as theses for academical disputations; as Laughton at
Cambridge introduced the Newtonian philosophy into these
exercises. The formula at Cambridge, in use till very recently in these
disputations, was “Rectè statuit Newtonus de Motu Lunæ;” or the
like.
56 See Hutton’s Math. Dict., art. James Gregory. If it fell in with
my plan to notice derivative works, I might speak of Maclaurin’s
admirable Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Discoveries, published in
1748. This is still one of the best books on the subject. The late
Professor Rigaud’s Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir
Isaac Newton’s “Principia” (Oxf. 1838) contains a careful and
candid view of the circumstances of that event.

The general diffusion of these opinions in England took place, not


only by means of books, but through the labors of various
experimental lecturers, like Desaguliers, who removed from Oxford
to London in 1713; when he informs us, 57 that “he found the
Newtonian philosophy generally received among persons of all ranks
and professions, and even among the ladies by the help of
experiments.”
57 Desag. Pref.

427 We might easily trace in our literature indications of the


gradual progress of the Newtonian doctrines. For instance, in the
earlier editions of Pope’s Dunciad, this couplet occurred, in the
description of the effects of the reign of Dulness:

Philosophy, that reached the heavens before,


Shrinks to her hidden cause, and is no more.

“And this,” says his editor, Warburton, “was intended as a censure on


the Newtonian philosophy. For the poet had been misled by the
prejudices of foreigners, as if that philosophy had recurred to the
occult qualities of Aristotle. This was the idea he received of it from a
man educated much abroad, who had read every thing, but every
thing superficially. 58 When I hinted to him how he had been imposed
upon, he changed the lines with great pleasure into a compliment (as
they now stand) on that divine genius, and a satire on that very folly
by which he himself had been misled.” In 1743 it was printed,

Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before,


Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
The Newtonians repelled the charge of dealing in occult causes; 59
and, referring gravity to the will of the Deity, as the First Cause,
assumed a superiority over those whose philosophy rested in
second causes.
58 I presume Bolingbroke is here meant.

59 See Cotes’s Pref. to the Principia.

To the cordial reception of the Newtonian theory by the English


astronomers, there is only one conspicuous exception; which is,
however, one of some note, being no other than Flamsteed, the
Astronomer Royal, a most laborious and exact observer. Flamsteed
at first listened with complacency to the promises of improvements in
the Lunar Tables, which the new doctrines held forth, and was willing
to assist Newton, and to receive assistance from him. But after a
time, he lost his respect for Newton’s theory, and ceased to take any
interest in it. He then declared to one of his correspondents, 60 “I
have determined to lay these crotchets of Sir Isaac Newton’s wholly
aside.” We need not, however, find any difficulty in this, if we
recollect that Flamsteed, though a good observer, was no
philosopher;—never understood by a Theory any thing more than a
Formula which should predict results;—and was incapable of
comprehending the object of Newton’s theory, which was to assign
causes as well as rules, and to satisfy the conditions of Mechanics
as well as of Geometry.
60 Baily’s Account of Flamsteed, &c., p. 309.

428 [2d Ed.] [I do not see any reason to retract what was thus said;
but it ought perhaps to be distinctly said that on these very accounts
Flamsteed’s rejection of Newton’s rules did not imply a denial of the
doctrine of gravitation. In the letter above quoted, Flamsteed says
that he has been employed upon the Moon, and that “the heavens
reject that equation of Sir I. Newton which Gregory and Newton
called his sixth: I had then [when he wrote before] compared but 72
of my observations with the tables, now I have examined above 100
more. I find them all firm in the same, and the seventh [equation]
too.” And thereupon he comes to the determination above stated.

At an earlier period Flamsteed, as I have said, had received


Newton’s suggestions with great deference, and had regulated his
own observations and theories with reference to them. The
calculation of the lunar inequalities upon the theory of gravitation
was found by Newton and his successors to be a more difficult and
laborious task than he had anticipated, and was not performed
without several trials and errors. One of the equations was at first
published (in Gregory’s Astronomiæ Elementa) with a wrong sign.
And when Newton had done all, Flamsteed found that the rules were
far from coming up to the degree of accuracy which had been
claimed for them, that they could give the moon’s place true to 2 or 3
minutes. It was not till considerably later that this amount of
exactness was attained.

The late Mr. Baily, to whom astronomy and astronomical literature


are so deeply indebted, in his Supplement to the Account of
Flamsteed, has examined with great care and great candor the
assertion that Flamsteed did not understand Newton’s Theory. He
remarks, very justly, that what Newton himself at first presented as
his Theory, might more properly be called Rules for computing lunar
tables, than a physical Theory in the modern acceptation of the term.
He shows, too, that Flamsteed had read the Principia with
attention. 61 Nor do I doubt that many considerable mathematicians
gave the same imperfect assent to Newton’s doctrine which
Flamsteed did. But when we find that others, as Halley, David
Gregory, and Cotes, at once not only saw in the doctrine a source of
true formulæ, but also a magnificent physical discovery, we are
obliged, I think, to make Flamsteed, in this respect, an exception to
the first class of astronomers of his own time.
61 Supp. p. 691.

Mr. Baily’s suggestion that the annual equations for the corrections
of the lunar apogee and node were collected from Flamsteed’s
tables 429 and observations independently of their suggestion by
Newton as the results of Theory (Supp. p. 692, Note, and p. 698),
appears to me not to be adequately supported by the evidence
given.] ~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~

Sect. 3.—Reception of the Newtonian Theory abroad.

The reception of the Newtonian theory on the Continent, was


much more tardy and unwilling than in its native island. Even those
whose mathematical attainments most fitted them to appreciate its
proofs, were prevented by some peculiarity of view from adopting it
as a system; as Leibnitz, Bernoulli, Huyghens; who all clung to one
modification or other of the system of vortices. In France, the
Cartesian system had obtained a wide and popular reception, having
been recommended by Fontenelle with the graces of his style; and
its empire was so firm and well established in that country, that it
resisted for a long time the pressure of Newtonian arguments.
Indeed, the Newtonian opinions had scarcely any disciples in
France, till Voltaire asserted their claims, on his return from England
in 1728: until then, as he himself says, there were not twenty
Newtonians out of England.
The hold which the Philosophy of Descartes had upon the minds
of his countrymen is, perhaps, not surprising. He really had the merit,
a great one in the history of science, of having completely overturned
the Aristotelian system, and introduced the philosophy of matter and
motion. In all branches of mixed mathematics, as we have already
said, his followers were the best guides who had yet appeared. His
hypothesis of vortices, as an explanation of the celestial motions,
had an apparent advantage over the Newtonian doctrine, in this
respect;—that it referred effects to the most intelligible, or at least
most familiar kinds of mechanical causation, namely, pressure and
impulse. And above all, the system was acceptable to most minds, in
consequence of being, as was pretended, deduced from a few
simple principles by necessary consequences; and of being also
directly connected with metaphysical and theological speculations.
We may add, that it was modified by its mathematical adherents in
such a way as to remove most of the objections to it. A vortex
revolving about a centre could be constructed, or at least it was
supposed that it could be constructed, so as to produce a tendency
of bodies to the centre. In all cases, therefore, where a central force
acted, a vortex was supposed; but in reasoning to the results of this
hypothesis, it was 430 easy to leave out of sight all other effects of
the vortex, and to consider only the central force; and when this was
done, the Cartesian mathematician could apply to his problems a
mechanical principle of some degree of consistency. This reflection
will, in some degree, account for what at first seems so strange;—
the fact that the language of the French mathematicians is
Cartesian, for almost half a century after the publication of the
Principia of Newton.

There was, however, a controversy between the two opinions


going on all this time, and every day showed the insurmountable
difficulties under which the Cartesians labored. Newton, in the
Principia, had inserted a series of propositions, the object of which
was to prove, that the machinery of vortices could not be
accommodated to one part of the celestial phenomena, without
contradicting another part. A more obvious difficulty was the case of
gravity of the earth; if this force arose, as Descartes asserted, from
the rotation of the earth’s vortex about its axis, it ought to tend
directly to the axis, and not to the centre. The asserters of vortices
often tried their skill in remedying this vice in the hypothesis, but
never with much success. Huyghens supposed the ethereal matter
of the vortices to revolve about the centre in all directions; Perrault
made the strata of the vortex increase in velocity of rotation as they
recede from the centre; Saurin maintained that the circumambient
resistance which comprises the vortex will produce a pressure
passing through the centre. The elliptic form of the orbits of the
planets was another difficulty. Descartes had supposed the vortices
themselves to be oval but others, as John Bernoulli, contrived ways
of having elliptical motion in a circular vortex.

The mathematical prize-questions proposed by the French


Academy, naturally brought the two sets of opinions into conflict. The
Cartesian memoir of John Bernoulli, to which we have just referred,
was the one which gained the prize in 1730. It not unfrequently
happened that the Academy, as if desirous to show its impartiality,
divided the prize between the Cartesians and Newtonians. Thus in
1734, the question being, the cause of the inclination of the orbits of
the planets, the prize was shared between John Bernoulli, whose
Memoir was founded on the system of vortices, and his son Daniel,
who was a Newtonian. The last act of homage of this kind to the
Cartesian system was performed in 1740, when the prize on the
question of the Tides was distributed between Daniel Bernoulli,
Euler, Maclaurin, and Cavallieri; the last of whom had tried to patch
up and amend the Cartesian hypothesis on this subject. 431

Thus the Newtonian system was not adopted in France till the
Cartesian generation had died off; Fontenelle, who was secretary to
the Academy of Sciences, and who lived till 1756, died a Cartesian.
There were exceptions; for instance, Delisle, an astronomer who
was selected by Peter the Great of Russia, to found the Academy of
St Petersburg; who visited England in 1724, and to whom Newton
then gave his picture, and Halley his Tables. But in general, during
the interval, that country and this had a national difference of creed
on physical subjects. Voltaire, who visited England in 1727, notices
this difference in his lively manner. “A Frenchman who arrives in
London, finds a great alteration in philosophy, as in other things. He
left the world full [a plenum], he finds it empty. At Paris you see the
universe composed of vortices of subtle matter, in London we see
nothing of the kind. With you it is the pressure of the moon which
causes the tides of the sea, in England it is the sea which gravitates
towards the moon; so that when you think the moon ought to give us
high water, these gentlemen believe that you ought to have low
water; which unfortunately we cannot test by experience; for in order
to do that, we should have examined the Moon and the Tides at the
moment of the creation. You will observe also that the sun, which in
France has nothing to do with the business, here comes in for a
quarter of it. Among you Cartesians, all is done by an impulsion
which one does not well understand; with the Newtonians, it is done
by an attraction of which we know the cause no better. At Paris you
fancy the earth shaped like a melon, at London it is flattened on the
two sides.”
It was Voltaire himself as we have said, who was mainly
instrumental in giving the Newtonian doctrines currency in France.
He was at first refused permission to print his Elements of the
Newtonian Philosophy, by the Chancellor, D’Aguesseaux, who was a
Cartesian; but after the appearance of this work in 1738, and of other
writings by him on the same subject, the Cartesian edifice, already
without real support or consistency, crumbled to pieces and
disappeared. The first Memoir in the Transactions of the French
Academy in which the doctrine of central force is applied to the solar
system, is one by the Chevalier de Louville in 1720, On the
Construction and Theory of Tables of the Sun. In this, however, the
mode of explaining the motions of the planets by means of an
original impulse and an attractive force is attributed to Kepler, not to
Newton. The first Memoir which refers to the universal gravitation of
matter is by Maupertuis, in 432 1736. But Newton was not unknown
or despised in France till this time. In 1699 he was admitted one of
the very small number of foreign associates of the French Academy
of Sciences. Even Fontenelle, who, as we have said, never adopted
his opinions, spoke of him in a worthy manner, in the Eloge which he
composed on the occasion of his death. At a much earlier period too,
Fontenelle did homage to his fame. The following passage refers, I
presume, to Newton. In the History of the Academy for 1708, which
is written by the secretary, he says, 62 in referring to the difficulty
which the comets occasion in the Cartesian hypothesis: “We might
relieve ourselves at once from all the embarrassment which arises
from the directions of these motions, by suppressing, as has been
done by one of the greatest geniuses of the age, all this immense
fluid matter, which we commonly suppose between the planets, and
conceiving them suspended in a perfect void.”
62 Hist. Ac. Sc. 1708. p. 103.

Comets, as the above passage implies, were a kind of artillery


which the Cartesian plenum could not resist. When it appeared that
the paths of such wanderers traversed the vortices in all directions, it
was impossible to maintain that these imaginary currents governed
the movements of bodies immersed in them and the mechanism
ceased to have any real efficacy. Both these phenomena of comets,
and many others, became objects of a stronger and more general
interest, in consequence of the controversy between the rival parties;
and thus the prevalence of the Cartesian system did not seriously
impede the progress of sound knowledge. In some cases, no doubt,
it made men unwilling to receive the truth, as in the instance of the
deviation of the comets from the zodiacal motion; and again, when
Römer discovered that light was not instantaneously propagated. But
it encouraged observation and calculation, and thus forwarded the
verification and extension of the Newtonian system; of which process
we must now consider some of the incidents. 433
CHAPTER IV.

Sequel to the Epoch of Newton, continued.—Verification and Completion


of the Newtonian Theory.

Sect. 1.—Division of the Subject.

T HE verification of the Law of Universal Gravitation as the


governing principle of all cosmical phenomena, led, as we have
already stated, to a number of different lines of research, all long and
difficult. Of these we may treat successively, the motions of the
Moon, of the Sun, of the Planets, of the Satellites, of Comets; we
may also consider separately the Secular Inequalities, which at first
sight appear to follow a different law from the other changes; we may
then speak of the results of the principle as they affect this Earth, in
its Figure, in the amount of Gravity at different places, and in the
phenomena of the Tides. Each of these subjects has lent its aid to
confirm the general law: but in each the confirmation has had its
peculiar difficulties, and has its separate history. Our sketch of this
history must be very rapid, for our aim is only to show what is the
kind and course of the confirmation which such a theory demands
and receives.

For the same reason we pass over many events of this period
which are highly important in the history of astronomy. They have
lost much of their interest for us, and even for common readers,
because they are of a class with which we are already familiar, truths
included in more general truths to which our eyes now most readily
turn. Thus, the discovery of new satellites and planets is but a
repetition of what was done by Galileo: the determination of their
nodes and apses, the reduction of their motions to the law of the
ellipse, is but a fresh exemplification of the discoveries of Kepler.
Otherwise, the formation of Tables of the satellites of Jupiter and
Saturn, the discovery of the eccentricities of the orbits, and of the
motions of the nodes and apses, by Cassini, Halley, and others,
would rank with the great achievements in astronomy. Newton’s
peculiar advance in the Tables of the celestial motions is the
introduction of Perturbations. To these motions, so affected, we now
proceed. 434

Sect. 2.—Application of the Newtonian Theory to the Moon.

The Motions of the Moon may be first spoken of, as the most
obvious and the most important of the applications of the Newtonian
Theory. The verification of such a theory consists, as we have seen
in previous cases, in the construction of Tables derived from the
theory, and the comparison of these with observation. The
advancement of astronomy would alone have been a sufficient
motive for this labor; but there were other reasons which urged it on
with a stronger impulse. A perfect Lunar Theory, if the theory could
be perfected, promised to supply a method of finding the Longitude
of any place on the earth’s surface; and thus the verification of a
theory which professed to be complete in its foundations, was
identified with an object of immediate practical use to navigators and
geographers, and of vast acknowledged value. A good method for
the near discovery of the longitude had been estimated by nations
and princes at large sums of money. The Dutch were willing to tempt
Galileo to this task by the offer of a chain of gold: Philip the Third of
Spain had promised a reward for this object still earlier; 63 the
parliament of England, in 1714, proposed a recompense of 20,000l.
sterling; the Regent Duke of Orléans, two years afterwards, offered
100,000 francs for the same purpose. These prizes, added to the
love of truth and of fame, kept this object constantly before the eyes
of mathematicians, during the first half of the last century.
63 Del. A. M. i. 39, 66.

If the Tables could be so constructed as to represent the moon’s


real place in the heavens with extreme precision, as it would be seen
from a standard observatory, the observation of her apparent place,
as seen from any other point of the earth’s surface, would enable the
observer to find his longitude from the standard point. The motions of
the moon had hitherto so ill agreed with the best Tables, that this
method failed altogether. Newton had discovered the ground of this
want of agreement. He had shown that the same force which
produces the Evection, Variation, and Annual Equation, must
produce also a long series of other Inequalities, of various
magnitudes and cycles, which perpetually drag the moon before or
behind the place where she would be sought by an astronomer who
knew only of those principal and notorious inequalities. But to
calculate and apply the new inequalities, was no slight undertaking.
435

In the first edition of the Principia in 1687, Newton had not given
any calculations of new inequalities affecting the longitude of the
moon. But in David Gregory’s Elements of Physical and Geometrical
Astronomy, published in 1702, is inserted 64 “Newton’s Lunar Theory
as applied by him to Practice;” in which the great discoverer has
given the results of his calculations of eight of the lunar Equations,
their quantities, epochs, and periods. These calculations were for a
long period the basis of new Tables of the Moon, which were
published by various persons; 65 as by Delisle in 1715 or 1716,
Grammatici at Ingoldstadt in 1726, Wright in 1732, Angelo Capelli at
Venice in 1733, Dunthorne at Cambridge in 1739.
64 P. 332.

65 Lalande, 1457.

Flamsteed had given Tables of the Moon upon Horrox’s theory in


1681, and wished to improve them; and though, as we have seen,
he would not, or could not, accept Newton’s doctrines in their whole
extent, Newton communicated his theory to the observer in the
shape in which he could understand it and use it: 66 and Flamsteed
employed these directions in constructing new Lunar Tables, which
he called his Theory. 67 These Tables were not published till long
after his death, by Le Monnier at Paris in 1746. They are said, by
Lalande, 68 not to differ much from Halley’s. Halley’s Tables of the
Moon were printed in 1719 or 1720, but not published till after his
death in 1749. They had been founded on Flamsteed’s observations
and his own; and when, in 1720, Halley succeeded Flamsteed in the
post of Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, and conceived that he had
the means of much improving what he had done before, he began by
printing what he had already executed. 69
66 Baily. Account of Flamsteed, p. 72.

67 P. 211.

68 Lal. 1459.

69Mr. Baily* says that Mayer’s Nouvelles Tables de la Lune in


1753, published upwards of fifty years after Gregory’s Astronomy,
may be considered as the first lunar tables formed solely on
Newton’s principles. Though Wright in 1732 published New and
Correct Tables of the Lunar Motions according to the Newtonian
Theory, Newton’s rules were in them only partially adopted. In
1735 Leadbetter published his Uranoscopia, in which those rules
were more fully followed. But these Newtonian Tables did not
supersede Flamsteed’s Horroxian Tables, till both were
supplanted by those of Mayer.
*Supp. p. 702.

But Halley had long proposed a method, different from that of


Newton, but marked by great ingenuity, for amending the Lunar
Tables. He proposed to do this by the use of a cycle, which we have
mentioned as one of the earliest discoveries in astronomy;—the
Period of 223 lunations, or eighteen years and eleven days, the
Chaldean 436 Saros. This period was anciently used for predicting
the eclipses of the sun and moon; for those eclipses which happen
during this period, are repeated again in the same order, and with
nearly the same circumstances, after the expiration of one such
period and the commencement of a second. The reason of this is,
that at the end of such a cycle, the moon is in nearly the same
position with respect to the sun, her nodes, and her apogee, as she
was at first; and is only a few degrees distant from the same part of
the heavens. But on the strength of this consideration, Halley
conjectured that all the irregularities of the moon’s motion, however
complex they may be, would recur after such an interval; and that,
therefore, if the requisite corrections were determined by observation
for one such period, we might by means of them give accuracy to the
Tables for all succeeding periods. This idea occurred to him before
he was acquainted with Newton’s views. 70 After the lunar theory of
the Principia had appeared, he could not help seeing that the idea
was confirmed; for the inequalities of the moon’s motion, which arise
from the attraction of the sun, will depend on her positions with
regard to the sun, the apogee, and the node; and therefore, however
numerous, will recur when these positions recur.
70 Phil. Trans. 1731, p. 188.

Halley announced, in 1691, 71 his intention of following this idea


into practice; in a paper in which he corrected the text of three
passages in Pliny, in which this period is mentioned, and from which
it is sometimes called the Plinian period. In 1710, in the preface to a
new edition to Street’s Caroline Tables, he stated that he had already
confirmed it to a considerable extent. 72 And even after Newton’s
theory had been applied, he still resolved to use his cycle as a
means of obtaining further accuracy. On succeeding to the
Observatory at Greenwich in 1720, he was further delayed by finding
that the instruments had belonged to Flamsteed, and were removed
by his executors. “And this,” he says, 73 “was the more grievous to
me, on account of my advanced age, being then in my sixty-fourth
year: which put me past all hopes of ever living to see a complete
period of eighteen years’ observation. But, thanks to God, he has
been pleased hitherto (in 1731) to afford me sufficient health and
strength to execute my office, in all its parts, with my own hands and
eyes, without any assistance or interruption, during one whole period
of the moon’s 437 apogee, which period is performed in somewhat
less than nine years.” He found the agreement very remarkable, and
conceived hopes of attaining the great object, of finding the
Longitude with the requisite degree of exactness; nor did he give up
his labors on this subject till he had completed his Plinian period in
1739.
71 Ib. p. 536.

72 Ib. 1731, p. 187.


73 Ib. p. 193.

The accuracy with which Halley conceived himself able to predict


the moon’s place 74 was within two minutes of space, or one fifteenth
of the breadth of the moon herself. The accuracy required for
obtaining the national reward was considerably greater. Le Monnier
pursued the idea of Halley. 75 But before Halley’s method had been
completed, it was superseded by the more direct prosecution of
Newton’s views.
74 Phil. Trans. 1731, p. 195.

75 Bailly, A. M. c. 131.

We have already remarked, in the history of analytical mechanics,


that in the Lunar Theory, considered as one of the cases of the
Problem of Three Bodies, no advance was made beyond what
Newton had done, till mathematicians threw aside the Newtonian
artifices, and applied the newly developed generalizations of the
analytical method. The first great apparent deficiency in the
agreement of the law of universal gravitation with astronomical
observation, was removed by Clairaut’s improved approximation to
the theoretical Motion of the Moon’s Apogee, in 1750; yet not till it
had caused so much disquietude, that Clairaut himself had
suggested a modification of the law of attraction; and it was only in
tracing the consequences of this suggestion, that he found the
Newtonian law of the inverse square to be that which, when rightly
developed, agreed with the facts. Euler solved the problem by the
aid of his analysis in 1745, 76 and published Tables of the Moon in
1746. His tables were not very accurate at first; 77 but he,
D’Alembert, and Clairaut, continued to labor at this object, and the
two latter published Tables of the Moon in 1754. 78 Finally, Tobias
Mayer, an astronomer of Göttingen, having compared Euler’s tables
with observations, corrected them so successfully, that in 1753 he
published Tables of the Moon, which really did possess the accuracy
which Halley only flattered himself that he had attained. Mayer’s
success in his first Tables encouraged him to make them still more
perfect. He applied himself to the mechanical theory of the moon’s
orbit; corrected all the coefficients of the series by a great number of
observations; and in 1755, sent his new Tables to London as worthy
to claim the prize offered for the discovery of longitude. He died soon
after 438 (in 1762), at the early age of thirty-nine, worn out by his
incessant labors; and his widow sent to London a copy of his Tables
with additional corrections. These Tables were committed to Bradley,
then Astronomer Royal, in order to be compared with observation.
Bradley labored at this task with unremitting zeal and industry,
having himself long entertained hopes that the Lunar Method of
finding the Longitude might be brought into general use. He and his
assistant, Gael Morris, introduced corrections into Mayer’s Tables of
1755. In his report of 1756, he says, 79 that he did not find any
difference so great as a minute and a quarter; and in 1760, he adds,
that this deviation had been further diminished by his corrections. It
is not foreign to our purpose to observe the great labor which this
verification required. Not less than 1220 observations, and long
calculations founded upon each, were employed. The accuracy
which Mayer’s Tables possessed was considered to entitle them to a
part of the parliamentary reward; they were printed in 1770, and his
widow received 3000l. from the English nation. At the same time,
Euler, whose Tables had been the origin and foundation of Mayer’s,
also had a recompense of the same amount.
76 Lal. 1460.
77 Bradley’s Correspondence.

78 Lal. 1460.

79 Bradley’s Mem. p. xcviii.

This public national acknowledgment of the practical accuracy of


these Tables is, it will be observed, also a solemn recognition of the
truth of the Newtonian theory, as far as truth can be judged of by
men acting under the highest official responsibility, and aided by the
most complete command of the resources of the skill and talents of
others. The finding the Longitude is thus the seal of the moon’s
gravitation to the sun and earth; and with this occurrence, therefore,
our main concern with the history of the Lunar Theory ends. Various
improvements have been since introduced into this research; but on
these we, with so many other subjects before us, must forbear to
enter.

Sect. 3.—Application of the Newtonian Theory to the Planets,


Satellites, and Earth.

The theories of the Planets and Satellites, as affected by the law


of universal gravitation, and therefore by perturbations, were
naturally subjects of interest, after the promulgation of that law.
Some of the effects of the mutual attraction of the planets had,
indeed, already attracted notice. The inequality produced by the
mutual attraction of Jupiter and Saturn cannot be overlooked by a
good observer. In the 439 preface to the second edition of the
Principia, Cotes remarks, 80 that the perturbation of Jupiter and
Saturn is not unknown to astronomers. In Halley’s Tables it was
noticed 81 that there are very great deviations from regularity in these
two planets, and these deviations are ascribed to the perturbing

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