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.

    13/142 (page 5)
    halations, which are necessary to lubricate the mucous and serous membranes. Though a consideration of the phenomena resulting from these depositions will assist us in our explanation of disease, we cannot exactly ascertain how the depo- sitions themselves are originated. Do arteries build up a bone merely by the addition of homogenous matter ? and, are the secretions and exhalations modified by the calibre of the minute branches, admitting only the vapoury parts to the surface of the serous membranes and of the skin, whilst they permit the transparent fluid parts of the blood to pass to the mucous surfaces and keep back the red globules. This mechanical expla- nation might suffice, in part, in the instances adduced, but when we come to the nutrition and renewal of muscle, and the formation of peculiar secretions, we must look for some still uncomprehended agency, which modifies the materials, conveyed by the arteries, whilst they are depositing ; even with respect to the deposition of bone this agency is required to solidify the new par- ticles, which are fluid in the blood; this power can be no other than chemical, the processes when examined will be found to be chemical precipitations by which new matter is deposited, and decomposition by which old matter is separated, and then carried off by absor- bents, and thus the support of the frame in health and the changes of disease proceed. In this investigation we may advance a considerable way, though we cannot come to the knowledge of the ultimate principle on which organic life depends, or we should be able to construct a man: as an instance how far we can go, we can analyse bone and we may explain how bony matter o_O cad bis € a By > sas eae