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.

    40/142 (page 32)
    which carry albumen and coagulable lymph allow enough of it to pass and to glue and unite the surfaces, _ if kept quietly in contact which is called technically union by the FIRST INTENTION. When blood is al- lowed to stand in a vessel, we see on the top of the clot of red particles which settle down from the serum, a layer of a yellowish white substance like paste; this part of the blood is the coagulable lymph which it carries in readiness to repair damages, yet this same coagulable lymph which is so useful for that purpose sometimes kills by blocking up the wind pipe, in croup. Hunter has pointed out the close analogy between inflammation and the formation of the first lining mem- brane of the gravid uterus. Now if the union by first intention be nines by disturbance, it becomes necessary that the surfaces should be reunited by the interposition of a new sub- stance forming a connecting medium, for this purpose small drops of coagulable lymph are exuded which con- crete, remaining at the cut ends of the capillary arterial branches which have yielded them, and in communi- cation with these open ends, so as to receive nourish- ment and become organised; these little portions of coagulable lymph are called GRANULATIoNS, and if they are not much disturbed they adhere to each other, and thus the cementing of the divided parts is effected ; in order to protect these new tender granulations they are covered with pus, a milky thick fluid which when of a due consistency is very properly called healthy pus, for it requires a healthy action of the capillaries to pro- duce it in proper quantity and of due consistency ; if _-pus did not defend the granulations from the air, they