A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    a solid till it be first formed into or suspended in a fluid.* The living animal body is obedient to these general laws, for all solid and animal matter has first been fluid, and having passed into this solid form, becomes a recipient for other fluids, out of which the solids may themselves be renovated and increased. The solids of an animal, although composed of one species of matter, yet admit of great variety in their appearance ; and this variety takes place in some animals more than in others. But the fluid part of an animal body, in its natural state, has but one ap- pearance, which is that of blood. There are certain parts of animals which, though hardly solid in their own nature, are yet to be considered as solids, from their being fixed in their situation, and appropriated to local actions; some of them acting on the fluids (which are, to a certain degree, passive in all animals), and disposing of them for particular purposes in the animal economy, in the same manner as is done by those which are usually called the solids in animals ; of this sort arc the gelatinous parts in many of the inferior orders of sea-animals, as the medusa, the vitreous humor of the eye, &c. There appears to be a sympathetic inter- course between the solid and fluid parts of an animal, designed by nature for their mutual support. In disease, when the machine cannot be furnished in the common way, the solids of the body supply the defects, and the person becomes lean ;f and the fluids * [See Principles of Surgery, p. 10. Chemistry affords a few exceptions to the universality of this law. Thus, chlorate of potash combines with sulphur or charcoal by mere attrition ; and the greater number of fulminating powders are examples of the same kind. Crystals of Glauber's salt and nitrate of bismuth are converted into a fluid by being rubbed together in a mortar, and so are the solid amalgams of bismuth and lead. The former part of this sentence is mani- festly a pleonasm.] f [Without wishing to question the soundness of this opinion, I would yet venture to suggest that it is contrary to analogy to suppose that the body can subsist on its own materials, unless these have undergone a previous digestion. The fattest people, on this principle, would be the fittest subjects for fevers; repeated losses of blood would produce the greatest degrees of emaciation, and those who have most fat would be the best able to endure privations of food ; all which is contradicted by observation. I apprehend that fatness and leanness depend on a want of balance between the waste and supply, the waste being prin- cipally occasioned by an acceleration of the vascular actions, and the more rapid interchange which thence ensues in the molecular particles of the body. This is seen in caterpillars, in young and growing animals, and in birds, as contrasted with amphibia, adults, and animals of the tardigrade species. The former re- quire a continual supply of food to replace the eifete matter, while the latter are enabled to sustain hunger for a long time without injury. Thus, hybernating animals retain their fatness during the whole period of their torpidity. Dr. Stevens mentions having seen a rattlesnake as fat after nine months' complete abstinence from food as at the first; and Professor Blumenbach has mentioned similar examples, of a still more remarkable kind. Fevers, on the other hand, rapidly emaciate the body, because in them the supply is cut off at the same' time that the waste from excessive action is increased. Thus, also, persons of active minds and bodies are seldom observed to grow fat. Women grow thin during the period of utero-gestation, and animals during the period of the rut. The uses of fat probably are to preserve symmetry and warmth, consequently in man and the cetaceous tribes it serves as a substitute for external clothing.]
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