Practical observations on diseases of the lungs and heart / By Archibald Billing.

  • Billing, Archibald, 1791-1881.
Date:
MDCCCLII. [1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on diseases of the lungs and heart / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    a communication to the Hunterian Society, 9th Feb. 1832, together with some practical observations, to shew that pathological alterations confirmed my ex- planation. This was published in the Lancet, 19th May, 1832.* Subsequently M. liouanet brought for- ward a similar explanation in his thesis, which was noticed in the Journal Hebdomadaire, Sept. 1832, and copied into the Medico- Chirurgical Review, * I here subjoin short extracts from the simple statement of the original communication, and after a lapse of twenty years have still to support my opinions against Gendrin, Skoda, Williams, Joy, Carpenter, Blakiston, <fcc.: “ Upon applying the ear, or stethoscope, to the chest of a person in health, at that point where the heart may usually be seen and felt to pulsate — that is, between the cartilages of the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side, you feel the ‘ beat,’ accom- panied by a sound, as if] the sound were produced by a blow against the ribs, and immediately after, a sound, rather shorter and weaker, appearing more distant, as if produced by the falling back of the body which gave the blow. . . . Now these phenomena are caused by the ventricles and the valves, for, contrary to the opinion of the immortal Laennec, the auricles have nothing to do with the production of the sounds; the push is caused by the swelling up of the ventricular muscles in their systole to expel the blood; the first sound is caused by the tension produced in the shutting of the auriculo-ventricular valves, and the second sound is caused by the tension produced in the shutting of the ventriculo-arterial valves. The cause here assigned might be thought inadequate to the production of the sound heard; but the little instrument used by gamekeepers to call partridges may be heard at least at the distance of a quarter of a mile, though con- sisting only of a bit of bladder stretched over a thimble, a mem- branous expansion which is five or six times less than the valves which act together in the heart, and which would give a much louder sound if not surrounded by soft parts. . . . This t It is this deceptive sensation which has led Majendie and others to think that the heart leaves the parietes of the chest, and returns at each beat.