Vicious circles in disease / by Jamieson B. Hurry.

  • Jamieson Boyd Hurry
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vicious circles in disease / by Jamieson B. Hurry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    points out (cf. p. 63), favours a further accumulation. The associated venosity of the blood may, through interference with the normal reflexes, form an ag¬ gravating factor. Haemoptysis. Haemoptysis may be complicated by a most pernicious Circle, which is largely responsible for the profusion and prolongation of the haemorrhage. In the first place the intra-pulmonary irritation of the effused blood induces cough; each act of coughing, like any other exertion, causes rise of blood-pressure ; each rise of blood-pressure is apt to renew the haemorrhage. Thus in a severe attack a person may be “choked in his own blood.” Mental excitement supplies an aggravating factor, as it also does in the allied condition of haematemesis. Such excitement may produce a rise of as much as 40 mm. Hg in the systolic pressure, a rise which often suffices to restart the haemorrhage. Lastly, we may have the same general vaso-constriction due to anaemia of the vaso-motor centre that has already been alluded to. These factors, acting cumulatively, adequately explain the fatal haemoptysis that is sometimes met with. Empyema. A similar mode of death may result