The vitality of the blood : proved by physiological experiment, and its application to veterinary pathology demonstrated / by J.S. Gamgee.

  • Sampson Gamgee
Date:
[1849?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The vitality of the blood : proved by physiological experiment, and its application to veterinary pathology demonstrated / by J.S. Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    malia, in whom the distinctive characters are, a capability to per- form a great variety of actions, and the gradual ascendancy of reasoning faculties over the instinctive. The structure of the brain, and distribution of the nerves, ac- quire complexity in the more elevated classes of animals, in pro- portion as their vital functions are more numerous; and in the same ratio the composition of the blood progresses, its red cor- puscles being destitute of a nucleus. The nucleated cell is gene- rally considered the most complete ; but in the red blood discs the absence of the nucleus obviously denotes perfection of organic structure, because the red non-nucleated corpuscles are substituted in embryo for a primitive set having a central macula. If, in proportion as the blood acquires more perfect forms, its use as a nutrient fluid be not adequately increased, but, on the contrary, that ascendancy in the scale of organization keeps pace with the more numerous manifestations of life, we neces- sarily conclude that the blood in circulation must be alive, because it would be subversive to all sound physiological doctrine to sup- pose that a dead fluid became the source of vital functions ; or, in other terms, that dead matter could be an origo vitse. Having dedicated the preceding observations to a description of the blood's development in embryo, it now behoves us to eluci- date the process by which the constant loss sustained by the blood in the renovation of adult animal structures is repaired. That organized materials alone can serve as food to animals, and hence that the chyle is an organic fluid, are well-known facts. The means by which the alimentary substances are triturated in the mouth, there subjected to the action of saliva, and subse- quently to the joint influence of pepsine and gastric juice in the stomach, are not appropriate changes for consideration in these pages ; neither shall we stop to detail the processes by virtue of which the pancreatic and biliary secretions tend to separate the nutrient from the excrementitious matters, but shall commence by an examination of the chyle. The chyle, procured from its appropriate conduits near the intes- tinal canal a few hours after the animal has been fed, is a white milky fluid containing water, salts, albumen, and numerous cor. puscles, of which four kinds have been distinguished. First, a molecular base, containing very minute and numerous particles of
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