A text-book of animal physiology : with introductory chapters on general biology and a full treatment of reproduction, for students of human and comparative (veterinary) medicine and of general biology / by Wesley Mills ... with over 500 illustrations.
- T. Wesley Mills
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A text-book of animal physiology : with introductory chapters on general biology and a full treatment of reproduction, for students of human and comparative (veterinary) medicine and of general biology / by Wesley Mills ... with over 500 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
193/750 page 161
![fibrin-ferment is added. Moreover, fibrin-ferment has not been isolated as an absolutely distinct chemical individual, free from all impurities. Because fibrinogen and paraglobulin give rise, under certain circumstances (it is asserted), to fibrin, and since plasmine acts likewise, it does not follow that plasmine contains these bodies. Further, it is stated that in the blood of crustaceans the clot arises from the corpuscles chiefly, which run together and blend into a homogeneous mass. The fibrin so called in such a case differs not a little chemically, it could probably be shown, if our tests were delicate enough to discover it, from that which is denominated fibrin in other cases. Fibrin-ferment seems to have been used to cover much ignorance and unnecessary invention, as we shall endeavor to show later on; and we can not but regard the reasoning in regard to the coagulation of the blood as evidence of an erroneous interpretation of certain facts on the one hand, and a large oversight of additional facts on the other hand. In the mean time we turn to certain well-known phenomena which bear a clear interpretation: 1. The blood remains fluid in the vessels for some time after the death of an animal; clots first in the larger vessels, and keeps fluid longest in the smaller veins. 2. The blood in the heart of a cold-blooded animal, as that of the frog or turtle, which will beat for days after the animal itself is dead, maintains its fluidity, but clots at once on removal. 3. The blood inclosed in a large vein removed be- tween ligatures does not coagulate for many hours (twenty- four to forty-eight). There are also facts of an opposite nature, thus: 1. When blood passes from a blood-vessel into one of the cavities of the body, it clots as if shed externally. 2. If a ligature be passed tightly around an artery so as to rupture the elastic coat, co- agulation ensues at the site of the ligature. 3. A similar clotting results when the inner coat of a blood-vessel is dis- eased, as in the case of roughening of the valves of the heart from inflammation, or the changes that give rise to aneurism of an artery. 4. A wire, thread, or other like foreign body, introduced into a vein, is speedily covered with fibrin. These facts, and others of like character, have been inter- preted as indicating that the living tissues of the blood-vessel or heart in some way ];revent coagulation, but as to details there is difference of opinion. Some believe that the fi])rin-ferment (essential to coagulation, according to their view) is formed by 11](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21212867_0193.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
