Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine : her life, her ecstasies, and her stigmata, a medical study / by F. Lefebvre ; translated from the French ; edited by J. Spencer Northcote.

  • Lefebvre, Ferdinand J. M., 1821-1902.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine : her life, her ecstasies, and her stigmata, a medical study / by F. Lefebvre ; translated from the French ; edited by J. Spencer Northcote. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    curred. However, it maj be affirmed that the column of mercury, allowing for the excess of elevation due to the acquired speed, reached almost the same height in each tube. The column of the closed tube was scarcely a centimetre higher than the other. The atmospheric pressure outside was 29'92 inches. We may therefore say, approxi- mately, that the vascular ruptures were produced under the cupping- glass, when the atmospheric local pressure was not greater than that of a centimetre of mercury ('394 of an inch). This physiologist remarks, very justly, that in certain morbid states we find haemorrhages take place in the small vessels under a much lower tension. He behoves that in these cases the bleeding comes from the small veins, because they may undergo distension; and a vaso-motor paralysis may give rise to such distension. The vessel being thus relaxed, its surface is made larger by the force of the blood current, and consequently the power of resistance is diminished. X. Hypertrophy of the heart, which consists in increased growth of the muscular fibres which constitute that organ, is a frequent cause of haemorrhage. The blood is impelled more forcibly into the vessels of the general or of the pulmonary circulation, according as the hyper- troiDhy occurs in the left ventricle (which is more commonly the case) or in the right ventricle. The tension of the blood is increased; it accumulates in those organs the vessels of which are most easily dis- tended, and especially in the brain and the lungs, whence haemor- rhages may result. We have abeady said that haemorrhages caused simply by increase in the blood tension are rare. If they take place sometimes in the case of which we are spealdng, that dej^ends partly upon the thinness of the walls of the cerebral and puhnonary vessels, which, being more dehcate and less supported than those in the other organs, are more liable to break when unduly distended, and partly also upon the fact, proved by observation, that in the case of hyper- trophy of the heart the lining membrane of the arteries frequently become atheromatous,^^ and consequently fragile. Haemorrhages caused by hypertro]3hy of the heart never take place either within or on the surface of the skin, the vessels of which have too much power of resistance, and are too well supported, to give way under the impulse of the heart, even when exaggerated. By the side of hypertrophy of the ventricles, which impel the *^ From hedpa (gruel), appHed to a degenerate state of the vessel wall when it becomes of soft pnltaceous consistence in parts.—Tkanslatok.