A Handbook of Practical Treatment, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from A Handbook of Practical Treatment, Vol. 2

The most important of the mechanical laws of the circulation have been formulated of late years by the researches of modern physiologists, who have applied to the work of the heart and circulation those laws of physics by which our systematic study of heart diseases must be governed, if not completed. If, as far as the state Of our knowledge permits, we comprehend these laws, we shall not only treat heart diseases more intelligently, but even in the technical applications of pharmacy we Shall be enabled to use our drugs with more definite purpose and efficiency. For instance, in defect of the results of modern pharmaco logic research Withering and Fothergill could use digitalis only empir ically, that is, in a more or less groping way; now this herb is a weapon of precision, and its properties are SO industriously investigated that we can work with it, alone or in combination with other agents, if not with complete command Of its resources, at any rate with no little address; for in it we have a quasimechanical agent, a potent means of raising blood-pressure in the arterial system, and thus Of preventing that large coefiicient of death, the slipping away of the blood from the arteries into the veins.

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Excerpt from A Handbook of Practical Treatment, Vol. 2

The compensation, for instance, of aortic regurgitation by a muscular hypertrophy might have been perceived more adequately before the interpretations of auscultation and percussion were availa ble, although it could not have been very accurately valued, promoted, or moderated. And even to-day, in using the term compensation in heart disease, we are not always careful to signify no more than, in the nature of the particular case, is required. N 0 large imagination is required to reveal to us that readjustment must be a very wide affair, extending to the extreme peripheries and, issues, not of the circulatory system only. We are prone to attach to the term compensation some notion of intervention, of device prearranged by the agency of Nature, as the motorist provides a spare tire in his car. Now, compensa tion in cardiac disease is no more than that gradually acquired capacity of any fairly stable moving equilibrium by which it has developed and survived, and by which it maintains itself. As in virtue of such continual readaptations it has become more complex, so it presents more defences against interferences. If by past adaptations against certain events a power of accommodation has been acquired, sta bility is maintained; if not, it fails. These perpetuated readjust ments, by which organisms survive and propagate themselves, are, by no means mechanical only; for instance, the responses of anti bodies, by which perturbations by incident poisons are neutralized, are compensations. But we must analyze the functions without imputing to them any end outside themselves. Compensation is not then quite so good a word as readjustment.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.