On the action of the muscular coat of the bronchial tubes in respiration, and on the exciting cause of inspiration and of expiration / by C. Radclyffe Hall.

  • Hall, Charles Radclyffe.
Date:
[1850?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the action of the muscular coat of the bronchial tubes in respiration, and on the exciting cause of inspiration and of expiration / by C. Radclyffe Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    i 2. That by the elasticity, which acts transversely in the walls of the air-])assages, the tubes are accommodated to the amount of air admitted into, or contained in them; but that, for enlarging the tubes for inspiration, and for lessening the tubes below their medium size for complete expiration, this elasticity is useless. 3. That the muscular contractility of the bronchial tubes, whilst, like the transverse elasticity, it resists over-dilatation during full inspiration, can reduce the tubes to less than the medium size, as is required in forced expiration. vV^ 4. That, inasmuch as forced expirations always alternate with ^ inspirations, the contraction of the bronchial muscular coat must ^ here be of the alternating kind, and not of the tonic persistent ' kind noticed in certain experiments. 5. That, if the bronchial muscular coat can thus contract rhytb- Diically in forced expiration, there is no reason for denying that it so acts, to a less extent, in ordinary breathing. Considering, indeed, the constant interruption to quiet breathing in the daily occupations of every man, from exercise of the voluntary muscles\^ generally, and of the voice, from variations of temperature, andA ^ from mental causes, it is little probable that any part of the \ machinery required for forced respiration is quite unemployed during ordinary breathing. 6. That, as far as our knowledge will permit, the objections to such a view have been shown to be without sufficient foundation. 7. That the exciting cause of inspiration in ordinary breathing « is fulness of the capillaries of the lungs with carbonised blood, but\^\j that there are many other auxiliary and occasional exciting causes *^ of inspiration. 8. That the sole and exclusive exciting cause of expiration is . the presence of unduly carbonized air in the lungs.'^ ^ In conclusion, these views, if correct, are not devoid of practical \^ interest. For an application of a portion of them, I must refer to the ingenious remarks of Dr. C. B. Williams, under the head of Asthma, Paralytic Dyspnoea, and Dilatation of the Bronchi.^^* * Library of Medicine, vol. iii., from which I must quote the following, as more explicitly disclosing Dr. Williams's own view than any otiier passage I have met with. It is probable that the contraction of the circular fil)res of the bronchi excited by a certain degree of foulness of the air that is within tlicm, is an essential part of natural expiration.—p. 90.