Copy 1, Volume 1

A treatise on the practice of medicine / By George B. Wood.

  • George Bacon Wood
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the practice of medicine / By George B. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/824 (page 5)
    elimination of which may be one of the advantages resulting from the use of diaphoretic medicines in these complaints. 4. Hitherto, we have considered the blood as vitiated in consequence either of some foreign principle being admitted into it, or of the accumu- lation of some principle which, though naturally entering the circulation, is, in the healthy state, eliminated as fast as it enters. But it must also be regarded as in a morbid state, when any one of its ordinary and essential constituents becomes either greatly redundant or greatly deficient. Such a redundance or deficiency may result from the peculiar character of the food out of which the blood is elaborated, or from some modification in the functions concerned in its elaboration, including those which supply it with materials, as digestion and absorption, those which abstract materials from it, as secretion and nutrition, and those which contribute to both these ends, as circulation, respiration, and probably nervous action. According to An- dral, 1000 parts of healthy blood contain from 110 to 140 parts of the red corpuscles, from 2°5 to 3-5 parts of fibrin, and on the average 68 or 70 parts.of pure albumen. Any excess or deficiency beyond these numbers must, in relation to the first two substances, be regarded as morbid; and any very considerable excess or deficiency, in relation to the last. Sometimes, under the influence of a rich diet and vigorous digestion, with a comparative deficiency in the nutritive process, the solid organic principles of the blood increase so much as to constitute a state of disease. The blood is intensely red, and, when taken from the body, affords a larger and firmer coagulum than in health. It is in this state highly stimulating to the organs, and may give rise to a general excitement amounting to fever, or to some local inflammation or hemorrhage. Again, owing to the use of a meagre diet, or to the influence of feeble digestion, combined, perhaps, with unusual vigour in the process of ab- sorption, a condition of the blood sometimes occurs in which the solid constituents are deficient, and the proportion of liquid excessive. Profuse hemorrhage, or frequent and large bleedings, produce the same effect by diminishing the volume of the circulating mass beyond the remunerating power of the digestive process, so that the deficiency must. be supplied by the absorption of watery fluid. I have had under my care a case, in which bleeding had been so. profusely employed that the vessels became filled with a turbid serum, which appeared, as it, fell Into the basin, like reddish dirty water, and, upon being allowed to stand, afforded a coagulum which bore an exceedingly smal] ratio to the liquid portion. This condition of the blood constitutes the disease called anzmia, which, as well as other consequences of excessive depletion, will be fully described hereafter. But not only is the blood liable to a general excess or deficiency of its organic constityents; there are also great diversities in the proportion which these constituents severally bear to each other; and excess or deficiency in any one of them may become a source of disease. Thus, an excess of the red corpuscles often occurs without any increase of the albumen or fibrin. This is indicated by a high degree of colour in the blood, a greater or less coloration of the serum, a large but not unusually firm coagulum, and the uniform absence of the buffy coat. It constitutes an active plethoric con- dition, and predisposes to fever and hemorrhage. If, in connexion with this excess of the red corpuscles, there be a deficiency of fibrin, the clot may still be large, but it will be unusually soft, and, along with the tendency to fever and hemorrhage, will be a feeble state of the vital actions. Not un- frequently, the red corpuscles, instead of being in excess, become deficient ;