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.

    20/28 page 16
    f *6 ] Thirdly, The ftagnation of all the fluids gradually follows, and confequently the diminution or deftrudtion of the tone of the fibres, herein then muft confift the proximate caufe. Should it be objected, that the incifioris of dead bodies little fupport our fecond inference* yet the reafons propofed juft above, refting on fixed principles of phyfiology, evince, that the blobd is accumulated in great abundance antecedent to death into the brains of the fufpended and drowned : and what other reafoii can be afligned of thofe corrufcations of light, which thofe, who have been brought back to life, have declared, they have beheld ? Why in the dead body no great quantity of blood is found accumulated, may be accounted for, oil this ground : although there is a peculiar connexion between the heart and the lungs, and even a certain mechanical connexion, yet, upon the breath being altogether flopped, fome motion of the blood haS been often and clearly obferved; if we credit Lower de Corde, Verheyen, and the ingenious Hunter.*—-- If, therefore, it be granted, that the veffels of the lungs in a ftate of expiration continue manifeftly pervious, inafmuch as the cor dextrum dies laft, it follows that fome of the venous blood muft flow into the left ventrical, while that cannot propel the humour into the veins. The annexed obfervation pf the great Harvey demonftrates, that after the death of drowned and ftrangled animals, the blood flowing may be very mueh
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3