The effect of climate on tuberculous disease : being, with additions, the essay for which the Fiske Fund Prize was awarded. With an appendix of corroborative observations and notices of several places of winter resort.

  • Lee, Edwin, -1870.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effect of climate on tuberculous disease : being, with additions, the essay for which the Fiske Fund Prize was awarded. With an appendix of corroborative observations and notices of several places of winter resort. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    number of pores 7,000,000; 145,833 feet, 48,000 yards, or nearly 28 miles of perspiratory tube. What if this drainage were obstructed P1 It is not, however, solely by means of the arrest or defective elimination of excrementitial matters from the blood, that inactivity of the functions of the skin may tend to produce tubercular cachexy. The close relationship which exists between the skin and the organs of respiration, and the part which it takes in the excretion of carbonic acid from the economy—and probably in the absorption of oxygen from the atmosphere—must lead us to consider it as a truly supplementary apparatus for the efficient accomplishment of this function, and that any material derangement of the skin must exercise a most pernicious influence on the organs contained within the thoracic cavity in many cases, even though the effects of this influence may not be immediately apparent. At the close of the last century, the respiratory action of the skin had already been noted by Messrs. Ingenhouze and Cruikshank; and the experiments made by Abernethy clearly showed that carbonic acid was excreted, and the oxygen of the atmosphere absorbed in variable proportions by this membrane. After keeping his hand alternately in two inverted vases containing respectively twenty-four ounces of oxygen and of azote, for a period of eight hours, Abernethy found that two thirds of the oxygen had 1 Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions, by Ronald Martin. 1856.