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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    probably most concerned in the evolution of heat, are more under the influence of the brain than the heart itself; and when this organ, as in fever, is supplied with impure or diseased blood, its functions are deranged, and the nervous system suffers in common with every other function of the animal body. In the commencement of the disease, the extreme vessels appear to be the first part of the vascular solids Avhich feel the effects of the remote cause; their action becomes languid, and in pro- ])ortion as this takes place, the animal heat ceases to be evolved in its usual quantities, the temperature of the blood in the extreme vessels soon falls, the skin and the extremities become cold, and when the blood, which has not been properly heated in the extreme circulation, arrives at the vital organs, the wdiole system is then chilled into a state of complete torpor. Even in mild fevers, such as the marsh intermit- tent, the patients sometimes die during the cold stage; but, in general, re-action soon comes on, and when it does, it commences first in the extreme vessels; and there is a period, in such cases, imme- diately after the commencement of the increased excitement, wdien the skin feels burning hot to the physician, while the patient himself still feels deadly cold, and the internal vital organs only recover their temperature wdien the blood that has been heated in the extreme circulation arrives at the heart, from wdiich it is sent first to the lungs, afterw^ards to the