First principles of medicine / by Archibald Billing.

  • Billing, Archibald, 1791-1881.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / by Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    0 by vital actions ; as, for instance, when there is periosteal membrane, we see that it keeps up a vital state of bone, whether in the bone of a leg or a tooth ; when there is no membrane attached, as in the enamel of the tooth, crystallisation, with the temporary membrane which forms the mould, decides the form of aggregation; in case of fracture of a bone, the surrounding parts decide the form of the callus which reunites it. Whilst bone is growing (as shewn by the common experiment of feeding young animals with madder, so as to pro- duce variegated deposits), there is a change as to disposition of the bony matter going on; but there is no reason to suppose that the substance of a healthy sound bone of an adult is changing, any more than of a tooth, or the wall of a castle, though there are preparations ready to repair a breach, if made. During health the capillary arteries go on with their work of nutrition and secretion, the muscles are fed, the mucous surfaces are lubricated just enough to prevent any sensation from the sub- stances which pass along them, the serous sur- faces are made sufficiently moist to slide upon each other without sensation, and the skin is kept soft by an insensible vapour. All this time there is another process going forward also, which is the removal of superfluous matter by the ab- sorbents : if it were not for these, there would be inconvenient accumulation of what is deposited by the arteries; the serous cavities, as that of the abdomen, for instance, would become dropsical, if the capillary arteries went on moistening the inter-