Remarks on a case of suicide, published by Dr. P.D. Handyside, in no. 134 of the Edinburgh medical and surgical journal : intended to show that he has erroneously ascribed the cause of death to air in the organs of circulation, with some strictures upon the theoretical doctrines advocated in his memoir / by John Rose Cormack.

  • Cormack, John Rose, Sir, 1815-1882.
Date:
1838
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on a case of suicide, published by Dr. P.D. Handyside, in no. 134 of the Edinburgh medical and surgical journal : intended to show that he has erroneously ascribed the cause of death to air in the organs of circulation, with some strictures upon the theoretical doctrines advocated in his memoir / by John Rose Cormack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    blood to the mesoceph'alon and the spinal marrow, above the origin of the phrenic nerve, by compression of the vertebral and carotid arteries, is fatal. The notion must be allowed to be fair and reasonable, that the function of the heart may be similarly arrested by the withdrawal differently effected of the sangui- ferous supply to its texture. How such a notion can be considered fair and reasonable, is somewhat difficult to understand; for as every one knows the contractions of the heart go on for sometime after the withdrawal of the sangui- ferous supply from its texture—they go on for a period much longer than that which elapses between the introduction of air into a vein, and the death of the animal experimented upon. But who is ignorant of the fact, that after the heart is cut out of an animal, and the coronary arteries consequently become filled with air, the muscular contractions of the organ are frequently seen to go on for a considerable space of time. To proceed, however, with our quotation :— Yet, being aware, says Dr. Handyside, '« that this temporary failure of the circulation is not adequate to explain the circumstance of the rapidity of death being always in the exact ratio of the suddenness and violence with which the heart is distended with air, (as the considerations already offered respecting the suspension of the heart's action may have served to show,) we are constrained to look more narrowly into the probable cause of death, and inquire, if, in such a case, the encephalon and spinal chord receive any supply of blood at all : and now finding that impossible, and next comparing the phenomena which supervened on the admission of air, with those symp- toms and results which characterise several anormal states wherein a similar derivation of blood from the head occurs, we accordingly at once recognise the analogy, and may thence be led to adopt, as, at least, probable, such a view of the cause of death, as follows. The cessation of the heart's action must operate injurious- ly, first, on the maintenance of the function in those organs which require an unceasing and unintermitted supply of blood.