A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    in disposing of this fluid, such as glands, is now, T believe, pretty well exploded ; and it is supposed therefore that the whole mass of blood is such as to be fitted for all the purposes of the machine. This idea gives to the parts themselves full power over the blood so composed, and makes us consider the circulation or motion of the blood simply.* As the blood is composed of different parts, it might be supposed that if any particular part had been expended in any process, the remainder, as returned by the veins, would show this by its different appearance or qualities. The only visible difference that I could conceive to take place was in the appearance or quantity of coagulating lymph. -To ascertain this, however, I made the follow- ing experiments. Exp. 1. I opened the right side of the thorax in a living dog, and tied a ligature round the vena cava inferior, above the diaphragm. * [It seems extraordinary that t.he question, whether the blood sent to any one part of the body differs from th#t sent to any other part, should ever have been agitated. (See note, p. 77). But to assign distinct and appropriate offices to the several elements of the blood in the functions of secretion, nutrition, &c, is altogether another question, which may plausibly enough be entertained. The observations of Bauer, Prevost and Dumas, and, lastly, of Milne Edwards, on the globules of the blood and several of the animal secretions, agreeing in this respect with the apparent globular constitution of the animal tissues, seemed for a time to establish a simple system of homogenesis of structure for the whole body, consisting, on the one hand, of an infinity of elementary molecules diffused through the nutritive fluids of plants and animals, and on the other hand, of these same molecules arranged in definite but diversified manners, so as to constitute the various tissues of the body. Unfortunately, however, for the beauty of this hypothesis, the very fact of-the globular constitution of the animal tissues has been recently denied by Hodgkin and Lister. (/J/»7. Mag. and Annals, Aug. 1827, and also Jipp. to TV. of Edwards's Influence of External Agents on Life, &c.») Tiedemann also affirms the same thing, and says that even where organic particles do exist they present various forms and sizes, and are unlike those of the blood. (P/iys., tr. by Gully and Lane, p. 397.) So far, therefore, as relates to the use of the globular particles we are just as much in the dark as ever; for though Hunter has pointed out their connexion with the strength and vigour of the animal (p. 72), Prevost and Dumas the relation which they bear to animal heat (Ann. de Clrim., xxiii.), and Dr. Christison the correspondence which exists between them and the consumption of oxygen in respiration (Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ., xxxv. 94), yet the exact relation which either of these phenomena bears to the cause from which it is supposed to spring is altogether a secret. It has also, with equal confidence, been asserted that the fibrin of the blood constitutes the basis of muscular fibre, and that it is the great intermedium by which recently divided parts are united ; the albumen also has been said to afford the basis of the dermoidal, ligamentous, and membranous tissues of the body. These however, at present must be regarded as mere conjectures, in favour of which no definite or satisfactory kind of proof has as yet been offered. If, as very probably is the case, the act of assimilation carried on in the parenchyma- tous structure of parts is to be regarded as of the same nature with secretion, then there seems no greater reason for supposing the preexistence of muscle, or brain, or ligament, ready formed in the blood, than for imagining that bile or milk, or semen, previously exist in this fluid ; and yet no one has yet been hardy enough to affirm that either of these secretions is discoverable in healthy blood.] In the Select Medical Library.