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
Catalogue details

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.

    17/20 (page 15)
    above the origin of the phrenic nerve, by compression of the vertebral and carotid arteries, is fatal ! This required no proof. The object Sir Astley had in view, was to determine the order in which the vital functions were arrested, and it is from their elucidating this point that so much interest attaches to them. He found that respiration was at once arrested, and that the animals died almost without a struggle, and not, as Dr. Han- dyside represents the case, in violent convulsions.''''* Now when a large quantity of air is thrown into a vein, the pheno- mena observed are very different. Desperate attempts at re- spiration are immediately manifested, and death is very speedily ushered in by terrible convulsions. Thus we perceive that there is no analogy between the effects produced by the introduction of air into a vein, and the with- drawal of the supply of blood from the mesocephalon and spinal marrow above the origin of the phrenic nerve :—and if no such analogy can be drawn, it necessarily follows that Dr. Handyside's hypothesis has no foundation to rest upon. There- fore, in preference to it, and every other doctrine on the sub- ject, I must still maintain that which is held by Nysten, Ma- gendie, &c. &c. and now, I believe by every one, who has, with sufficient care, experimentally investigated the subject, viz. that the inability of the pulmonic side of the heart to contract, in consequence of its distension with frothy blood, is the cause of death when this is the immediate result of the introduction of air into the veins. * Guy's Hospitiil Reports, No, IIJ., Sept. ]83fi,