A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow.

  • George Hilaro Barlow
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/778 page 25
    with which we are most concerned, in the treatment of disease, are the principles of the secretions of the great depurating organs, the lungs, the liver, and the kidneys ; to which may be added the sMn (which is correlative with and often, in a great measure, vicarious of the latter), and the glandular of the large intestines. Now the depurating action of these organs may be suspended, or interrupted, chiefly in three different ways: 1st, the depu- rating organ may itself be unsound ; 2, the circulation of the blood through it may be obstructed; or, 3, the matter to be eliminated may not be brought to the depurating organ in the particular form suited for removal by that organ. The first of these conditions will be specially noticed, in respect to each secretion, in treating of the diseases of the cor- responding organ, -when the particular consequences of the retention will also be described. In order to the due appreciation of the second and third cir- cumstances just mentioned, as interfering with the action of the depurating organs, it is necessary to understand the general conditions essential to their full operation. We know from physiology, that, in the course of the circula- tion, carbonic acid gas is formed and received into the blood, and that, if retained, it acts as a poison to the system: and we also know, that the removal of this gas is effected in the cells of the lungs; where it is exposed to the action of another gaseous fluid, the atmospheric air, which acts as a solvent of the car- bonic acid; and, according to Dr. Stevens, exercises some attrac- tion for it. It may here be remarked that though water and carbonic acid are the only excretions or exhalations from the membranes ol the air-cells in the perfectly normal state ; yet, as pointed out py Ur Alison, it is certain that many volatile matters taken into the stomach, are excreted unchanged, or but little changed with the breath, and probably the body is thereby saved from tneir injurious effects. It must therefore follow, that if the tree access of air to the cells or the free circulation of the blood through the lungs be impeded; there must ensue an mquination of the blood by carbonic acid, and perhaps by other gaseous excretions. J As regards the bile and the urine, the former of these se- ITrlT* m a.ll1(luid consisting °f water, holding, in solution, Wl,v P™?1?1^, containing a large proportion of carbon and nyaiogcn, which are uniformly present in health, and are in ScinlPaUg Pr°bably U0t wholly> excrementitious. These Etift r°f°7el'' .C;X1St Jn healthy bl00d' iu vel7 minute ffi^C *v1B t]le office of the liver t0 rem°™ tht'm; weir secretion taking place, as there is every reason to believe
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