Quotes from Chemistry...part 2!

"Respiration is a combustion, truly very slow but otherwise perfectly similar to that of charcoal; it occurs in the interior of the lungs... and the heat developed in this combustion is communicated to the blood which traverses the lungs and is spread throughout the animal system."
-Lavoisier and Laplace, 1783

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre-Simon,_marquis_de_Laplace_(1745-1827)_-_Gu%C3%A9rin.jpg 

Laplace, before his transform. [1]