Volume 1

The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner.

  • Thomas Hawkes Tanner
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/692 (page 8)
    Salts :— Phospliate of soda, lime, magnesia, and iron . \ buiphate of potash ''- 6- Pats ^—sodium and potassium, siUca, '&c. '. / •Margai-ine .... Oleine Seroline Cholesteriue Phosphuretted fats, Scc.y Extractive matters (creatine and creatinine amono■^ the most important), with traces of urea, uric r^-, acid, bihary colouring matter, &c J The blood receives matter from three sources :—from the atmo spheric air, through the lungs; from the primary digestion whTch takes place m the alimentary canal; and from the metamorphosis by which tbe tissues which have served their purpose and become effete, are absorbed to be discharged from the economy. In return, it affords material for building up the tissues, for forming the secretions, and for producing the excretions. Hence what^ ever interferes with the process of chylification, with ^espira. fcion with the excretory organs (as the bowels, -liver, kidneys, and skm), and perhaps with the healthy condition of the nervous system, will affect the compositioii of the Wood. Mr. Paget adopts the proposition found in the writings of Treviranus,* to the effect that each single part of the body, in respect of its nutrition, stands to the whole body in the relation of an excreted substance and this certainly seems to be true. Thus, to take only one example, it can readily be understood that the phosphates deposited m the bones are as effectually excreted from the blood as those which are discharged with the urine. In health, then, when the sources of the blood are duly supplied, and when all the various organs and tissues abstract from this ever-circulating fluid the special materials they need, a general balance is maintained in the system; but allow the rough materials for forming blood to be too large or too small in quantity, or let one organ act imper- fectly, and every part of the body becomes necessarily more or less unfavourably affected. The changes which take place in the blood under different cir- cumstances wi]l be noticed in treating of the various disordered states of the system. It may, however, be useful to premise that as disease and death can arise from certain elements which are indispensable to the healthy nutrition of organs being deficient or absent in the food, so equally disastrous results will follow from injurious matters being introduced or retained in the blood. * Die Erscheimmgen unci Gesetze cles organischen Lebens, Band i. p. 402 Bremen, 1831. Mr. (i. H. Lewes, in his work on the Fhi/siologij of Gommoih ilif'l'J ^' ^' ^^^'1* conception is due to Caspar Priedrich Wollf, whose doctrine of epigenesis rests upon it. See Theorio von der Generation, 1764. I.