On fibrinous deposition in the heart / by Benjamin Ward Richardson.
- Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward, (1828-1897)
- Date:
- 1860
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On fibrinous deposition in the heart / by Benjamin Ward Richardson. 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.
18/52 page 10
![of fibrine over the proportion of 3 per 1000 of blood may be readily ascertained. It remains for me to adduce one other proof of the fact that fibrinous concretions may be formed during life. This proof, reserved to the last, may be considered the most direct, because it appeals to the visual sense. It is this: that in an animal fibrinous deposit in the heart may be induced—induced by experiment, by what I have elsewhere called the pro- duction of disease by synthesis; that the presence of such concretion being diagnosed by symptom, the animal may be made insensible to pain by a volatile narcotic ; and that then, the respiration being sustained artificially, and the chest laid open, and the pulsating heart laid bare, the heart may be opened, and the concretion found there present, and removed. I have succeeded in various ways in thus producing concretion : I have succeeded by arresting a large tract of the circulation, as by passing a ligature beneath the trachea, carrying its ends back behind the vertebral column, and by the tourniquet screw cutting off the cerebral circulation. I once narcotised a dog with sulphuretted hydrogen; and, when the animal was entirely insensible, I allowed him to remain in the open air for several hours. He was still insensible at the end of nine hours, but was evidently sinking: I then laid open the heart, and found in the pulmonary artery a distinct fibrinous concretion. [See Note 2.] But the best way of performing this synthetical experiment is to place a car- nivorous animal in a closed chamber, and to fill that chamber steadily and constantly with pure and freshly made oxygen. A carnivorous animal so placed will live, I find, for a period of from twelve to thirty-six hours. When the animal begins to fail, or, in other words, to sink, there is manifested in all his move- ments the signs of obstruction of the heart— signs which will hereafter be more carefully indicated. The sinking fully set (for, before the sinking, there is no concretion, the prostration being the mere result of the obstruction), narcotic vapour is in- troduced into the chamber, and, insensibility complete, the vivi- section is made. I have extracted large concretions from six animals under this condition. The colour of the clot has varied in these cases from red to perfect white. In one instance, a cat being the subject of experiment, the concretion was of pure white, and filled and distended the right auricle, and passed into the ventricle, and passed into the pulmonary artery. In this instance, the sinking symptoms were allowed to go on until death was imminent. Nevertheless, the heart was actively contracting when it was exposed, and continued to contract for nearly twenty minutes after the concretion was removed from its cavities. I have thus offered, I trust, not a theory, but a complete de- monstration, of the fact that fibrinous deposition is an event possible previous to death. I shall have to trace out, in a succeeding chapter, the symptoms indicative of concretion, whereupon the opportunity will recur of adding further proofs to those already supplied.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22326601_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
