On the relation between diabetes and food and its application to the treatment of the disease / by Arthur Scott Donkin.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation between diabetes and food and its application to the treatment of the disease / by Arthur Scott Donkin. 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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    subjected, and thus suffer distension from which the capillaries and veins escape in consequence of being entirely destitute of a muscular coat,^ and also by their position which screens them from the pulsating action of the heart. We ca^ thus interpret the structural changes under consideration -which, according to Dr. Dick- inson, fee(/m in a, dilatation of the arteries, per- mitting l^he accumulation and escape of blood, and followed by degeneration of nervous tissue which becomes absorbed; cavities being thus produced. Because assuming that he is correct in the sequence of events, and that arterial dilatation (not due to previous change outside the vessels) is the initial stage of the diseased process, it must be produced by some morbid cause resi- dent in the walls of the arteries themselves, espe- cially as in diabetes the action of the heart becomes more and more enfeebled. Dr. Dickinson further contends that we may have recourse to the supposition that the nervous alterations are antecedent to and productive of glucosuria, and abandon the view that they are > According to Kolliker tlie veins in the substance of the brain and chord contain not a trace of muscular fibre. Manual of Human Microscopic Anatomy, London, 1860, p. 242.