Volume 1

Diseases of the arteries including angina pectoris / by Clifford Allbutt.

  • Thomas Clifford Allbutt
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of the arteries including angina pectoris / by Clifford Allbutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/560 (page 35)
    The progressive stiffening of the walls of the arteries might then be indicated by the comparative rates of wave propaga¬ tion—wave velocity as contrasted with stream velocity. As we have seen, this is no very simple consideration. The following table was, I believe, accepted by Tigerstedt, Keyt, and others as approximately correct; the principles, with Professor Dixon’s kind assistance, I illustrated in my lecture at the Royal Institution in 1905.1 Age Table of Arterial Elasticities Wave Velocity. Child set. 4^ 216 mm. per s Man set. 25 . 306 ,, ,, Man set. 40 416 ,, ,, Man set. 55 • 510 „ In chronic Bright’s Disease] or l rate still faster.2 Calcified arteries J But Miinzer of Prague 3 also has recorded measurements of pulse-wTave propagation. In health he found it to run—aorta to tibia!—from 9 to 12 m. per second, and in arteriosclerosis it rose to 15-23 m. per second; in hypotony it fell to 6-7 m. The highest rates (to 20 m. (!) or even more) were attained in hypertonic vessels (“ Starrheit ”). In Munzer’s observations the velocity seemed to depend wholly on the state of the wall, not on the blood pressure; but a comparison, by identical methods, is still to be desired between the waves of a wall in mean, and in constricted, attitudes, and in a wall distended under high pressures. Silbermann has demonstrated in a very interesting way how the pulse-wave rate depends upon the innervation whereby the attitude of the wall is altered from time to time. Professor L. Hill has pointed out, and Dr. Rolleston 4 agrees 1 See Nature, Feb. 16, 1905. 2 Compare also McCurdy’s table, p. 25. 3 Munzer, at the Congress of Inner Medicine at Berlin in 1912. See also Pfliiger, vol. cxxxvi., 1910; and Miinzer and Friberger, quoted by Silbermann in an important contribution in Zentralbl. Herz-u. Gef.-Kranktn., Juli 1913; and Edgren’s book; and Miinzer again in same journal, Nov. 1, 1913. See also Friberger, and Friberger and Veiel, Deutsche Arch. f. klin. Med. Bd. cvii., 1912. Friberger concludes that the coefficients are elasticity, tone (in the muscular vessels), and degeneration. 4 Rolleston, H. D., Clinical Journal, Aug. 28, 1912.