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.

    39/142 (page 31)
    by the veins unchanged, or at least unconsumed, so that there is always an abundant overplus for the de- mands of the system, and this provides against accidental or artificial loss of blood. Whilst the processes described go on, the animal suffers no inconvenience, is in health, but when acci- dental mechanical injury or other cause changes the action of the capillaries, either by a direct impression on themselves, or by primarily injuring their nerves, the derangement of their action is the commencement of disease ; secretions become altered, checked, or profuse ; nutrition is either diminished so as to produce emaci- ation or there is an excessive deposition ; vapory exha- lations are diminished to dryness or encreased to fluid, bony particles are deposited in wrong places, or albu- minous, fatty, and other particles, so as to constitute tumours; the nerves of parts become morbidly sensible so as to derange the functions of those parts; portions losing their vitality undergo spontaneous decomposition and are removed by the absorbents. To explain this more in detail, every process of p1s- EASE is the result of some alteration of those actions, which when perfect, constitute the welfare of the ani- mal, and in some instances by a provision of nature the newly altered action, which is the consequence of the injury, repairs the damage without assistance from art ; for instance, the tubes which conduct the air through the lungs are under ordinary circumstances scarcely moist, but if particles of dust or insects get in, the irri- tation causes the production of mucus which entangles the foreign substance and so brings it away with cough. We also see where a part is cut, the minute arteries