Some reasons for the supposition that the red corpuscles of the blood have cycloidal rotation : (with addenda) / by R.W. Woollcombe.

  • Woollcombe, Robert William.
Date:
[1876]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some reasons for the supposition that the red corpuscles of the blood have cycloidal rotation : (with addenda) / by R.W. Woollcombe. 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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    ADDENDA, NO. 2, ON ROTATION OF BLOOD DISCS, BT E. W. WOOLLCOMBE. CF.) A further instance of possibly supplementary provision for rotation (in aid of the means already stated), for due stimulation of the Brain, may exist in the sudden curves of the Internal Carotid and Vertebral Arteries just before they supply the Brain, and proceed to the circle of Willis. I would remark, that in the instance of the Internal Carotids, the first branches leaving those vessels immediately after their sharp curve, are the ophthalmic—certainly not in importance the least—and, than them—none more likely to have for their function, (if any arteries have), the conveyance of discs in swift rotation. Another instance, having relation to the stimulation of the muscular tissue of the Heart—may exist in the curves of the coronary arteries. T would draw a clear distinction between the respective effects on rotation given by an ai'tery tJuit is helicine, and one merely curved in approximately hut one jjlane—in the latter, the (assumed) previously existing aortic cy- cloidal rotation, about the short diameter of the disc, would be little, if at all, interfered with—as regards direction of plane—though it would be increased or diminished in amount, according as the curve was in aid or the reverse—but, by a helicine curve, a result, very different, would be brought about, as seen in the gyroscope—and detailed in Addenda, E. (H.) It might probably be chiefly, if not wholly, for the execution of a function in which action, of a reflex kind, would be exceptionally in request, that such violent and compounded evolutions of the arterial disc, (^per the super-imposed helical rotation) would be set up—and which, it may be remarked, could scarcely occur without a simultaneous disturbance of the electrical state (Note, p. 5, and Addenda, D.) (I.) Since writing the above Paper, and chiefly from consideration of the curves of the great sinuses of the Dura Mater, I have been led to modify my idea that there was rotation of discs in the arteries d^ily ;—the blood disc is not known to be materially changed in form after its passage through the capillary system—and seeing that it thus remains in a form of great oblateness, and hence, as before stated, one on which rotation must be easily impressed and maintained, and also a form that, on what- ever diameter of which, rotation may have been set up, it (the rotation') is certain, eventually, to settle about the shortest or natural axis of rotation remembering this, it does appear impossible that such curves as these alluded to could be traversed by such oblate bodies, without rotation being set up of a similar kind, though less in degree than in the arterial discs. (J.) It is also notable that in the cerebral and cerebellar veins there are no valves—however, there are otherwise valves, numerous enough, between the head and the upper extremities, and the heart-how rotation could be .set up in the discs in the veins of the extremities it is hard to see, unless It \yere given by the curves of the anastomoses of the veins between the capillaries and the large trunks-or, the divergences of the latter, as, for instance, those of the median cephalic and basilic from the median vein • and both the Cavm may discharge into the venous side of the heart discs with rotation. ° relieves my mind from the difficulty indicated possibly ” in the first page, in relation to the pulmonary arteries--as there does not seem to be as much curve in those of^hl^ do already rotate in the right side of the heart, so much curve would not be needed, seeing that their des- tination IS so near at hand, and, secondly, where their function Ser'STiS^'' '' transformed to tie