A practical treatise on apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage), its pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics, and prophylaxis : with an essay on (so-called) nervous apoplexy, on congestion of the brain and serous effusion / by William Boyd Mushet.

  • Boyd-Mushet, William.
Date:
1866
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage), its pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics, and prophylaxis : with an essay on (so-called) nervous apoplexy, on congestion of the brain and serous effusion / by William Boyd Mushet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of the skull, that is, the brain, the blood, and the serum together, must be, at all times, nearly a constant quantity. In support of his opinions certain experi- ments on rabbits are detailed, which are recorded as indisputable proofs of the accuracy of his positions. In the first experiment two well-grown rabbits were taken. A was killed by opening the jugular vein and carotid artery on one side. B was strangled. A liga- ture was drawn tightly round the throat of the rabbit A, immediately it expired, to prevent any further escape of blood from the vessels of the head. They were then allowed to remain twenty-four hours on a table, resting on their sides. On examination, the brain and vessels in A were pallid and exsanguined. In B the vessels, membranes, and brain-substance highly vascular, and as if stained with extravasated blood (pp. 13, 14). Now this experiment appears to me to be open to objection, as twenty-four hours were allowed to elapse before examination of the heads. It will be admitted that the blood, after death, obeys the laws of gravitation rather than the forces which operate during life, and assuming, in the animal bled to death, that the blood within the cranium was not diminished at the time of death, it might yet tend to become distributed, after death, over the body (through the vertebral veins, &c.),to replenish the emptied state of the venous system, notwithstanding the precaution of a ligature round the neck. If so, the anaemic ap- pearance of the brain would be a secondary result. On the contrary, the ligature in B would tend to pro- duce effusion of blood from forcible compression. In the above experiments (A and B) not any men-