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.

    75/142 page 67
    of mucous fluid »with uneasiness or griping, called diarrhoea. It is the fate of medical men above all others to be called upon perpetually to reconcile apparently con- tradictory assertions, as how does it happen that the distended state of the capillaries, which sometimes produces increased flow of mucus, should at other times produce dryness; it is because the secretion of the lubricating fluid is stopped when the capillaries are over distended (vide p. 28 to-30), and the renewal of the secretion is a sign of the diminution of inflam- mation, or in other words, when a painful dry cough becomes loose and the phlegm begins to come up the case is improved; the mucous membranes in their healthy state can scarcely be said to be moistened, more than the serous, by their vessels,they are merely kept lubricated and soft, now the effect of relaxation of irritation or Inflammation on the vessels of the mucous follicles sometimes is to produce a thin saline or serous fluid instead of the thickish mild mucus, but as the vessels recontract as inflammation subsides they secrete the mild mucus again. These are instances of simple local disease depending upon one morbid change an enlarged state of the mi- nute capillaries of the part, either from the vessels them- selves being forced as by a blow, or by their tone being diminished, from their nerves suffering injury, by excess of cold, or heat, or acrid matter applied to them. With these examples hitherto given of simple local inflammation there have been no constitutional symp- toms added. The nervous system, the brain, spinal and ganglionic nerves are not affected, the heart’s action
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