On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis.

  • Willis, Robert, 1799-1878.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    treacly consistency which is observed in certain morbid condi- tions of the body—diabetes mellitiis, and Asiatic cholera—to cite an extreme, and the extremest, case known; and is then in the fittest possible condition to imbibe such a fluid as water, possessed of a density so much inferior to its own. It is mat- ter of notoriety that mariners shipwrecked, or confined to the caps and shrouds of water-logged vessels, endure privation of water for very long ^periods of time when their clothing is, of course, kept constantly saturated by the spray of the sea. Some few months ago we had the well-authenticated history of the master of a water-logged ship who survived, for 28 days’ priva- tion of all solid food, with such scanty and distant supplies of water only as he could collect in the palm of his hand, when rain fell so heavily as to trickle down the mast. But he was constantly exposed to the spray of the sea, and his clothing, which was happily abundant, was almost uniformly in a state of saturation. The rest of the crew, under precisely the same circumstances as the master, but scantily clothed, dropped off one after another at different intervals, according to their ca- pacity, as it would seem, to resist the benumbing effects of cold and privation. Without dwelling upon such extreme cases as the above, it appears pretty well authenticated that persons athirst through exertion and somewhat protracted abstinence from liquids, find their drought abated by immersion in a warm bath. Dr Madden* found that, despite the continued loss by pulmonary and cutaneous transudation, the body generally gained in weight during immersion in a warm bath—the increase, in some instances, being as much as five drachms and a half in the course of half an hour, and as the loss of weight during the previous half-hour had been six drachms and a half, sup- posing the loss to have proceeded at the same rate dui’ing the immersion in the bath—which is by no means certain—the gain by imbibition through the skin in the course of the half- * Experimental Inquiry into the Physiology of Cutaueoxis Absorption.