The anatomy of the absorbing vessels of the human body / by William Cruikshank.

  • Cruickshank, William, 1745-1800.
Date:
1786
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of the absorbing vessels of the human body / by William Cruikshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    take place till after that period. It is poffible that the venereal poifon, and the poifon of the mad dog, may be abforbed in the. fame way -y for they generally remain long in the part to which they were originally ap- plied, and matter is commonly formed on that furface before the fymp- toms peculiar to thefe difeafes take place. There is one poifon which is certainly generated in the body, but which muft be abforbed before it can infect the conftitution : I mean the poifon of cancerous matter. There is another fluid, the abforption of which has been faid to produce very fatal effects in the conftitution : I mean pus. Hectic fever and pul- monary confumption have happened after large fuppurations ; but whe- ther thefe are to be attributed to the pus being abforbed, and carried into the blood-veffels, or whether they are not rather to be afcribed to the debility induced in confequence of the irritation of long-continued fores, may be doubted. The quick pulfe, in hectic fever, appears frequently to be a fymptom only of irritation : accordingly, the pulfe has become flow and natural, when a limb, with the fore which kept up this irritation, has been amputated -s and hectic fever has been found to take place where there was no pus to be abforbed. If hectic fever always followed the formation of pus, abforption of this fluid might with more propriety be fufpected as the caufe j but very large abfceffes have been formed without it. In the fourth place, the lacteals and the lymphatics increafe, if they do not produce entirely, fome difeafes of folids.—The lungs are affected with fcrophulous inflammation : whether the lymphatics are the caufe of this, I do not know ; Dr. Hunter believed, from the univerfal fwel- ling of the glands immediately under the fkin, in fcrophulous patients, that the lymphatics took up fome noxious particles from the atmofphere. But whether the lymphatics are the caufe of the inflammation or not, they increafe the difeafe, and render it more quickly fatal : they ultimately are concerned in the erofion of the blood-veffels of this vifcus, and fatal hae- morrhages frequently enfue : the fubflance of the lungs is gradually re- moved, and the advantage of breathing atmofpheric air is diminifhed in pro- portion to this lofs of fubflance ; the debility increafes, and the patient dies. I have known even the whole of the lungs of one fide removed from this caufe. In other parts of the body, part of the coats of arteries have alfo occafionally been removed, and fatal haemorrhages have thence enfued %