Observations on the healthy and diseased properties of the blood / by William Stevens.

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the healthy and diseased properties of the blood / by William Stevens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    • • XU ])reseiit day that animal chemistry lias assumed a sober asjiect or been usefully applied in the treat- ment of disease ; and surely, from the facts which we now know, we may be allowed to reason on the effects which Mdll naturally be produced by energetic ae-ents which are known to enter the vital current; D although we may no longer use the language of our predecessors, and talk about fermentation, concoction, the four humours, error loci, the stimulus of death, or think of oxygenating the blood in fever, cholera, &c. by means of acids, and other agents that are sup|)osed to contain oxygen in a separable form. That the blood is l)oth black and diseased in the last stage of all those fevers that are speedily fatal, is now just as certain as that the sun is the great source of light. It is also more than probable that the phy- sician, who is acquainted with the true cause of the redness ol the vital stream in its healthy state and of its darkness in disease, will be more likely to restore this tiuid to its original colour, when it becomes black, or its healthy properties, when it becomes deranged, than the mere solidist who adopts a philosophy that is only applicable to rigid tubes; whilst, both in his theory and practice, he forgets that there is either blood or any other fluid in the living body ; and dreams from first to last of nothing but ‘ sympathy,* ^ the nervous system, or increased action in the ‘ internal surfaces of the mucous membranes.’