Report on the action of anaesthetics to the Scientific Grants Committee of the British Medical Association / by a committee consisting of John G. McKendrick, Joseph Coats, David Newman.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the action of anaesthetics to the Scientific Grants Committee of the British Medical Association / by a committee consisting of John G. McKendrick, Joseph Coats, David Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    protoplasm. Further, the limitation of the meshes themselves (Fig. 5, b) becomes so indistinct, that it is with considerable difficulty that the course of the capillaries can be traced. This difficulty is increased by the tendency of the corpuscles to aggregate themselves at certain points (f'S' 5> leave empty spaces where the capillaries, partly on account of this deficiency, become invisible (Fig. 5, b). The want of clearness in the definition of the capillaries is not, however, entirely due to the absence of corpuscles; for even where the corpuscles are abundant (Fig. 5, a), the capillary walls are less distinct than when the circula- tion is active. As regards the calibre of the arterioles and capillaries, it may be roughly stated that the former contract a sixth, the latter a ninth, from what they were previous to the administration of the anses- thetic vapour by artificial respiration. The causes of this contraction will be considered hereafter. Should repeated supplies of air be now passed into the lung, the condition of that organ will be restored to what it was before the ansesthetic was given. The corpuscles themselves appear also to be altered by the action of the anzesthetic vapour, in so far that, at some points, they appear as if they had become completely disintegrated, and their place filled by a mass of a reddish-coloured material, which disappears on the re-estab- lishment of the circulation. The granular appearance presented by the contents of the meshes, ^d the disintegrated condition of the corpuscles, are not represented in Fig. 5, in which figure the outline of the corpuscles is too distinctly shown. In order to determine the effect of anwsthctics upon the cardiac