First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    105/142 page 97
    hill, if some blood be feos the Toles will rise, as is well known in the sunk state of the pulse in severe inflammation of the lungs or bowels, but not so gene- rally acknowledged in typhus, but again if the horse without being either stimulated by the whip, or having his load lightened, be allowed to rest, he will be able _ to ascend; and without either stimulating on the one hand or venesection on the other, the heart will also recover and the pulse rise; and here we come to the explanation of the manner in which saline, antimonial, and other sedative (contrastimulant) medicines, and means, such as cold externally, are beneficial to the pulse in fevers, both where it is too strong and where it 1s too weak but at the same time the temperature is above the natural standard ; it is in both cases by re- pressing the expenditure of nervous influence in sensa- tion and motion, in consequence of which the heart struggles less, takes repose, and at the same time capil- lary action is increased, by which the nervous system recovers power, by the diminution of the coma of ple- thora, which exists in typhus, not from over power of heart, but from weakness of capillaries. _Thus we see two modes of diminishing the exertions of the heart, the necessity for which is universally ac- ‘knowledged when the pulse is too strong and frequent ; but it is not so generally acknowledged that when the pulse is frequent and weak the heart is also over-exert- ing itself, the blood being in each case not only what is to be moved by, but the excitant of action to, the heart. | The diminution of organic action in the heart will diminish the efforts equally with reducing the quantity N
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