A treatise on vital causes / by James Newton Heale.

  • Heale, J. N. (James Newton)
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on vital causes / by James Newton Heale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    SECTION I.] SYSTEMIC OPERATIONS. 1«39 while that condition lasts, the very power of producing a vital energy of proper intensity will be impaired. This provision, by which the contrast presented by the two kinds of blood is lessened by an undue rapidity of the cardiac function, is another safeguard against the excessive exaltation of the vital tension. The actual amount of vital force, which the walls of the heart would consume during each of its con- tractions, must be in proportion to its size, and to the quantity of blood which would pass through its capil- laries ; and the intensity which it would display would be precisely that which all other vital functions, both systemic and pulmonary, would then exhibit. If other functions were vehement in their action, the pulsation of the heart would be energetic in pro- portion, up to a certain point, which the structure of the heart would not allow it to exceed, in consequence of the force then overleaping the barriers which were appointed for its insulation ; a voltaic discharge would then put a stop to its further accumulation ; and this insulation, which governs the amount of accumulation that the heart's capillaries can sustain, must be appor- tioned to the amount of resistance requisite to be overcome in the systemic organs. When this balance is interfered with, the systemic functions are imper- fectly performed: thus, when these cardiac contrac- tions are too rapid, and a less amount of vital tension than is needed for the performance of the systemic functions induces their repetition, the heart is said to be irritable, and irritative fever results. The systemic