Obstetrics: the science and the art.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetrics: the science and the art. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    940. Morbus Cosruleus,—The disorder produced hj these acci- dents used to be called morbus coeruleus, or blue disease, now known as cyanosis. Let us inquire what is the real nature of this cyanosis, and the causes why it produces its peculiar symptoms. The blood is either venous or arterial, or, as Bichat denominates it, black or red blood. The red blood of the arteries is transferred to the veins by the channels of the capillaries. It is in traversing the capillaries that the red blood deposits its oxygen, and so, when arrived on the venous segment of the circle, has become black. The capillaries may be regarded, then, as a sort of strainers or filters, whose of&ce, in part, it is to take the oxygen out of the blood for the service of the tissues. Whenever the tissues are capable of taking oxygen from the capillary blood, the tissues in which capillaries exist have their normal hue or coloration; but if there be none, or an insufficient supply of oxygen, they become livid. Cyanosis, therefore, is not due to any backing of the venous circulation by a check received at the orifice of the pulmonary artery. Such backing would produce engorgement of a red, not of a cyanose hue. Cyanosis is black blood from want of aeration in the lungs, and not from backing of the current. Rokitanski is in error in maintaining his view of the backing up of the blood. I maintain that cyanosis, as a disease, is essentially of the same nature as asphyxia. But the question now is, as to what is asphyxia. In my opinion, asphyxia, essentially considered, is black blood in the capillaries of the brain. Some physicians insist that asphyxia is black blood in the lungs. The lungs always contain black blood, which is reddened in the lung-capillaries; therefore I con- tend that asphyxia is black blood in the brain. Asphyxia is a state of the brain in which that organ cannot extricate or give out the life-force—the innervative force—-the stream or current of nervous force—the biotic force—and I contend that it fails to do so for want of oxygen to react upon the neurine. Cyanosis is the sign of the presence within the brain-capillaries of non-oxygeniferous blood, which is dark or purple or black blood, as Bichat calls it. The purple or dark hue of cyanosis is caused by the presence of black blood only in the capillaries. But when this dark hue of the cutaneous capillaries is seen, it is evidence of a similar hue of all the capillary blood, whether in the abdominal, the thoracic, or the cephalic cavities and organs. This purple state of the blood is not fatal, except it exist in the brain, whose power it suspends. If it be chased out of the brain, by oxygeniferous streams of arterial blood, all the organs and tissues that lie under the control and domination