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.

    36/142 (page 28)
    nation is not active but passive, the term also used by Bichat of the blood beige drawn or invited into an inflamed part may be explained on the same principles. Irritation of the nerves of a part at last produces inflammation by exhausting that nervous influence which gives the capillaries power, they thus become weakened, allow of over distension, and the part is in the state of inflammation or congestion; this effect may be produced by electricity which acts palpably through the medium of the nerves, so that redness produced in this way is as evidently through the medium of nervous influence as blushing. Thus in a part inflamed, there is a diminution of organic action, in consequence of which the blood is admitted in excess; as long as the capillaries are sup- plied with nervous influence, as long as they possess _ perfect organic action, they preserve a due size; when they lose it, either from the influence not being supplied from the nervous system, or are robbed of it by heat, electricity, cantharides, or other cause, they give way and admit more blood than before. This leads to an explanation of the diminution of SECRETION in an organ at a time when it is in fact more full of that material, (the blood) from which it secretes, than ordinary, as the kidneys, the skin, &c., and enables us to account for the dryness of skin, and scanty secretion of the kidneys in fever, &c., without reference to Cullen’s doctrine of spasm, but on the contrary from an increase in diameter of the capillaries, not from obstruction, but on the contrary too much room. Secretions are carried on by fine capillaries which