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.

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    in the cure; as well as the advantage of bloodletting, when the heart and capillaries do not balance in power, for the mere object of iaking off the injecting force of the heart, as for instance when the specific diuretics fail from the congested state of the kidneys, venesection often proves the most powerful diuretic, as sometimes the most efficient cathartic. On the other hand, in Dropsy of broken down consti- tutions, as well as in Inflammations with failure of the vital powers, by referring to the influence of the nervous system, in giving strength to the capillary system, so as to enable the capillary arteries to contract and resist the distending force of the heart, we can understand how, in some instance, stimulants as wine, by increasing the nervous energy, and consequently capillary action, may restrain the effusion, when evacuation would sink the patient; so that dropsy like inflammation is cured by opposite treatment, according to the state of the consti- tution. A fruitful source of dropsy is disease of the heart, organic alteration, especially hypertrophy, and imperfect valves, or, contracted openings, the effect of the hard pulse from hypertrophy being to cause over distension, at the same time that the capillaries from diminished nervous energy are weakened; for the obstruction, or regurgitation from imperfect valves causes pulmonary congestion, and deficient arterialization of blood, and cerebral congestion, both diminishing nervous energy, from which result capillary conjestion, evinced by dys- pneea, livid lips, &c., tendency to coma, diminished se- cretions, dropsical effusions.