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.

    64/142 (page 56)
    stimulants are obliged to be given; I therefore consider it neither stimulant nor sedative, but tonic, that is by the specific action on the capillaries whether directly on their tissue or through the medium of their nerves it causes them to contract, when (though all the injecting force of the heart where taken off by sedative treatment) they would not have had power to close; when intro- duced into the circulation, arriving at the capillaries, which cannot be otherwise come at, giving them tone to contract analogous to the effect of an astringent ap- plied to external sores; liquor arsenicalis, nitrate of silver, sulphate of copper, colchicum, &c., have a similar action, some more applicable than others to particular cases. ‘This I say is the rationale also of what is called stimulating the secretions of internal organs, when their capillaries are weak they have the tone restored by mer- cury, and the secretions thus renewed, but it should not be forgotten that mercury like some other tonics in excess becomes poisonous, and may cause inflammation in other parts as it does in the gums, on the principle adduced before, that one degree of contraction of the capillaries is necessary to reduce inflammation, a still further degree will stop nutrition, and bring on wasting and disease, as syphilis is starved out sometimes at the expence of the constitution. Children and young persons while growing are very subject to inflammation because their capillary system is in an expansible state, which accounts for their gums being difficult to effect by mercury. Both arsenic and sulphate of copper occa- sionally produce ptyalism and are otherwise analogous to mercury in their actions. Rheumatic inflammation of the fibrous tissue of which the capillaries are very