An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays, on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation / by Thomas Young.

Date:: 1823

Credit: An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays, on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation / by Thomas Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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sibly be advantageous in venous hemorrhages. ^8 have, however, no sufficient authority for believing, that it has any such effect on the arterial system in general. Although the arguments, which I have advanced, appear to me sufficient to prove, that, in the ordinary state of the circulation, the muscular powers of the arteries have very little effect in propelling the blood, yet I neither expect noi desire that the prevailing opinion should at once be univer- sally abandoned. I wish, however, to protest once moie against a hasty rejection of my theory, from asupeificial consideration of cases, like that which has been related by Dr. Clarke; and to observe again, that the objections, which I have adduced, against the operation of the muscular powers of the arteries in the ordinary circulation, not being applicable to these cases, they are by no means weakened by any inferences which can be drawn from them. ADDITION. [From the Ed. med. chir. journ. VI. 386.] The reviewer of some articles from the Philosophical Transactions has observed, after speaking of Dr. Young’s Croonian lecture, that the case described by Mr. Brodie affords a sufficient confutation of “ the speculations in the preceding Croonian lecture, because the circulation must have been carried on by the muscularity of the arteries, as there was no heart.” The question is thus deci- ded in a very convenient manner for those who either cannot or will not enter into any argument on the subject. But I maintain, that, in all probability, there teas a heart, capable of propelling the blood into the vessels of the mola; and it appears to me, that Dr. Young has given himself un- necessary trouble in endeavouring to reconcile such cases with his theory ; for none of them, with which I am ac- quainted, tend, in any material degree, to militate against it.

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