The antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera / by John Parkin.

  • John Parkin
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera / by John Parkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    before shown that the abstraction of the carbonic acid, in vacuo, does not change the dark colour of venous blood: if, therefore, oxygen gas exert any influence in the change from venous to arterial —or, from black to red—it must be directly, not indirectly. The following experiment would seem to prove this:— If you immerse the red clot, remarks the writer in the Lancet before referred to, in distilled water, and place the vessel in the chamber of an air-pump, bubbles of gas will rise through the water, and, as this takes place, the crassamentum becomes black.'' It is immaterial whether this gas be oxygen or carbonic acid, as the result, in either case, is fatal to the theory of Dr. Stevens. We may how- ever conclude, that the change takes place from the abstraction of oxygen : an inference confirmed by the following operation—the eocperimentum criicis. Our Dublin contemporary, the Dublin Medical Journal, observes the reviewer, goes a step further, and, on re-admitting atmospheric air to this black saline blood, discovers that it forthwith again becomes florid. The experimental evidence is here complete, and overturns the whole of Dr. Stevens's theory, from the dome to the foundation. We cannot ascertain what the result would be, if the crassamentum were deprived of its saline ingredients ; it being impossible to separate the whole of the saline matter, even by repeated washings in distilled water. It is clear, however, that this matter must play a very subordi-