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.

    24/150 (page 16)
    being', that I proved the second sound to depend on the tension of the valves, produced by the backward pressure of the blood upon them from the arteries; whereas Dr. Elliott asserts, that the second sound depends upon the blood flowing' from the auricles, which he even puts in italics; so that my demon- stration is, that the sound is caused by the valves in holding the blood on the one side, whereas the et opin- a circulation, that I cannot permit his assertions to pass unan- swered. Me has paid me the compliment to mention my name in several works, but has, unfortunately (hinc ilia; lacryma), uniformly misrepresented my opinions, which I cannot account for, as they are ■written in plain homely English, not “ wrapt in the obscurity of a dead language,” like those of Dr. Elliott. But I do not despair of converting him at last, as in the London Journal of Medicine, April 1850, he says,— * * * “ hence these (the heart and its valves) in their usual transition from slack to tight in systole and diastole, still produced their natural sounds. [Then, in a note.] This is my explanation of the natural sounds, inferred from the experiments before referred to. The ventricles with their valves, at each systole, are suddenly tightened on the contained blood, and thus produce the first sound, &c. This looks as if he were coming round from his opinion given at p. 20G of the Lectures, 1840, “ that the cause of the sound must be in the solid structure of the ventricles” (bruit musctdaire); and (p. 304), “that the first sound is produced by the muscular contraction itself, may be considered as proved by Obs. 8 and 9 of Experiment 1, &c. And again (p. 207), “ the muscular contraction of the heart produced systolic sound, for we had the heart out of the body, without its blood, tcithout valvular action.” lie cannot back out of this, “ litera scripta manet and I do not quote his opinions without giving his words. In his Principles of Medicine (2d edit. 1848, page 305), speak- ing of “ the rigors often experienced at the commencement or increase of inflammation,” he says: “ Dr. Billing plausibly ascribes this to the system sympathising at the death of the part which is under destruction by the suppurating process. Begging his par-