Epilepsy and other convulsive affections : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Charles Bland Radcliffe
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy and other convulsive affections : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. 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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    is indeed allowed on all hands) to the fact that there is some impediment to the free flow of blood through the capillaries of the systemic circulation— an impediment, that is to say, by wliicli the systole of the ventricle is made to expend itself with greater force upon the coats of the intermediate arteries. Again, it may be questioned whether the muscu- lar contractions which are produced in the two other experiments, when black blood is injected into the vessels, may not also be due to the want of some stimulus belonging to the red blood rather than to the action of any stimulus derived from the venous blood. At any rate it is well known that the uterus has often contracted and expelled its contents when a pregnant animal has been bleeding to death. And there are several facts on record in which the human uterus, even, has expelled its burden after the mother has yielded to the utter syncope of actual death. As it seems, however, the grand difficulty in the ■way of accepting this idea—that muscle is stimu- lated to contract by venous blood—is a chemical difficulty. For what is the main difference between arterial blood and venous blood ? It is that the oxygen of the former has in the latter become dis- placed by carbonic acid. Now carbonic acid has an action upon all parts of the nervous system which minister to intelligence or sensibility—upon all
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