An essay on vital suspension : being an attempt to investigate and to ascertain those diseases, in which the principles of life are apparently extinguished / By a medical practitioner.

Date:
1741 [i.e. 1791]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on vital suspension : being an attempt to investigate and to ascertain those diseases, in which the principles of life are apparently extinguished / By a medical practitioner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/28 page 13
    £ ] the lungs are repleted. Yet we cannot from thence agree, that this is the principal circumftance, much Jefs the fource of the fymptoms manifefled in the fequel—-but the truth is, they fometimes receive the water, fometimes do not, nor in either cafe are thev pbferved to make any variation in the death, that enfues. The ca^fa proximo, or caufa morbum continent is a general debilitation of the fyftem, having its origin mediately or immediately in the brain, the true end and object, to which all remedies fliould be directed, is to encreafe the vires of the body—for vain and ineffectual muff all our endeavours be, to impart motion to the ftagnated humours, unlefs a vis agcnfli be previoufly communicated to the heart. This caufe, it is evident, equally agrees to every variety of the genus, to which this diforder belongs; jn thofe cafes of Afphyxia, which arife from cold, noxious vapours, and the like, the canfa proximo arifes out of the direCt aClion of the exciting caufes upon the nerves, the interceding conditions, by which it is immediately effected, in cafes of drowning pr ftrangling, are now to be confidered. Who in the prefent day can call in queftion the efficacy of ftimulating powers to refufcitate as well as to preferve life, if this great prasfidium oflife, or even any confiderable part of it, be fubducled from us, we almoft immediately become a mafs of inanimate matter; the circulating humours are adapted by $heir peculiar properties, their abundance and the nature
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