Copy 1, Volume 2

The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1834
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/704 (page 8)
    Orpen II. explanation in proof that distention must follow upon the common increased The contrac- tion of muscu- lar fibres not continuous but with alternate pauses. Such pauses or relaxations more prolonged and obvious in debilitated organs: the more com- mon condition of inflamed parts. Capillary vessels peculi- arly subject to such increased alternations, and why. Hence the difficulty solved. OL. TL] HAMATICA- Corp. If. of fibrin, or a greater tendency in its usual proportion to coagulate, arrangement in respect of sanguineous globules, so that they may coalesce, or be more strongly attracted together. And the second may spring from a relaxation in the minute arteries, augmented in proportion to the vigour of their contraction, so as to admit the been impervious to them, where they must necessarily become im- pacted from a vis 4 tergo on the one hand, and the decreasing dia- meter of the minuter vessels opened into on the other. truth in the one or the other of these suggestions. But, it should not.be forgotten, that increase of action by no means necessarily im- ports increase of strength, and that the motific or contractile power communicated to the muscular fibres never flows, even in a state of health, in a continuous or interrupted tenor, but with an alterna- tion of jets and pauses. Upon this subject we shall treat at some as well in the Proem to that class as under several of its subdi- visions, particularly the genus CLONUS or CLONIC SPASM * ; where we shall show that, in weakly habits, in which a morbid increase of nervous action must frequently take place, the more violent the jet,. and consequently the contractile effect that ensues, the more pro- longed and complete the alternating pause, and consequently the relaxation in the same fibre ; excepting in cases of rigid or entastic spasm, which will be explained in its proper place. And hence the very fact of increased contraction paves the way for a subsequent and alternating dilatation, and this too in proportion to the violence that the contraction exhibits ; since the stream of nervous power, instantaneously and before the next supply arrives. This must be the result in all cases of inflammation, whether the part affected, or the whole constitution, be in a state of atony or of entony. But, as we have already shown, that inflammation far more generally takes place in the-former than in the latter ; and as we have shown also, that the capillary vessels, in which inflammation seems to commence, are endowed with a far higher proportion of contractile power than the larger arteries, it must. follow, that the morbid irre- gularity of action which exists of necessity in the vessels of an inflamed part, by such sudden and alternate exhaustions of con- tractile power, and consequently such intervening periods of rest and relaxation, must lay a foundation for distention; the posterior current of blood now rushing forwards, almost without resistance, into the inflamed part; where, also, it must accumulate, as, in the same vessels, beyond the inflamed limit, there is no such morbid rest and relaxation, and consequently a continuance of the uniform resistance of a healthy state. And when to these facts we add also the necessary intermission of the globular and larger corpuscles of blood into vessels whose ordinary diameter is too small to receive them, we can be no longer at a moment’s loss to account for the a