The principles and practice of veterinary medicine / by William Williams.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of veterinary medicine / by William Williams. 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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    The feeble pulse, if associated with softness, the artery yield- in- readily to the finger, indicates general or cardiac debility. It is sometimes so weak as to give one the idea that the artery is filled with air, hence it has been called the gaseous pulse, and is not infrequent in an anamiic condition of the body. _ The small pulse-pulsus parms-mzy result from anemia; from conoestion of some important organ, as the lungs ; from feeble con- traction of the heart; or from great tonicity of the arterial coats The hard pnlse-puhus ctos-hardness of the pulse is that property by which the artery resists compression, and results from contraction of the muscular coat of the arterial walls. Har« 1 - ness of the pulse is often associated with smaUness--^^ duruset parvus; it is then termed corded wiry or thready and this condition is often met with in the earlier stages of mflam matory disease, particularly during the rigor-in endocarditis, and in dangerous inflammations of serous membranes-and, experimentally, the thready pulse has been produced by division of the pneumo-gastric nerves. Dr Sanderson describes this pulse as follows:- When the pulse is small and hard, as during the rigor at the outset o Lute diseases, and in certain dangerous forms of carditis the, expansion of the radial artery is sudden and of short duration the suddenness of the movement not depending upon the rapidity with which the arteries empty themselves by the capillaries, but on the violence with which the heart itself con- tracts In this form of pulse there is no second beat. I lie explanation is clear: the difference between the arterial and venous pressure is so considerable, and the range of variation in the peripheral arteries so limited, that no perceptible diastolic retardation takes place in the capillaries, and consequently no second expansion. , The hard pulse is seldom associated with largeness; the nearest approach to the hard full Wlse-pulsus magmts et dun>s- sTs rot full pulse of laminitis. It may, however depend t ^rophy'of the left ventricle of the heart, and be Vr - upon ji r j inflammatory disease, \\ hen the o if Sal top— of the suWitay ^SU-or ad. tu of „*. -