On the use of artificial respiration and transfusion as a means of preserving life / by T. Lauder Brunton.

  • Brunton, T. Lauder (Thomas Lauder), 1844-1916.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of artificial respiration and transfusion as a means of preserving life / by T. Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    more distinctly still if the lower end of the spinal cord were touched. Even when the experiment was carried farther, and the whole of the cervical with part of the dorsal spinal cord was destroyed, evidences of life could be observed in the posterior two-thirds of the thorax. These experiments demonstrated beyond doubt that, if the lungs and heart could perform their functions with any other fragment of the body as they do with the thorax, it might be kept alive. As Legallois himself says, if the place of the heart could be supplied by a sort of injection, and if at the same time a supply of arterial blood, either natural or artificial, if such a formation of blood were pos- sible, could be obtained, life might be maintained indefinitely in any fragment of the body whatever; and consequently a decapitated head might be kept alive and in possession of all the faculties pertain- ing to the brain. Not only could life be maintained in this manner, either in the head or in any other isolated part of an animal's body, but it might be recalled after its entire extinction; it might even be re- called to the whole body, and a veritable resurrection, in every sense of the word, might be effected. Perhaps it may seem that the success of his experiments rendered Legallois too sanguine ; but his anticipa- tions have already in great part been fulfilled, and a decapitated head has been partially at least restored to life by M. Brown-Sequard. His experiment, as related by M. Vulpian,* consisted in cutting off the head of a dog immediately after it had been killed, and connecting the carotid and vertebral arteries with an apparatus for artificial circula- tion. After eight or ten minutes had elapsed, and all signs of excita- bility in the medulla oblongata and the rest of the encephalon had been gone for several minutes, defibrinated and arterialised blood was injected simultaneously into the vertebrals and carotids. In a few seconds, signs of life began to appear, and the muscles of the eyes, in fine, acted in such a way as seemed to prove that the cerebral func- tions were re-established. Hardly less astonishing than Brown-Sequard's experiments are those of Preyer,f who has succeeded in restoring their vital properties to a frog's muscles after they have been brought into the state of rigor mortis by dipping them into warm water. This condition depends on coagula- tion of the muscular substance or myosin; and circulation of blood alone through muscles in this state is of no use, for it cannot soften the hardened myosin. Something more is, therefore, necessary. Coagu- * Revue de Coiirs Scientijiques, 1864-5, tome ii, p. 317. + Centralblattfiir die Med. IVisseitc/iaft., 1864, p. 769.