Selected monographs.

  • Kussmaul, Adolf, 1822-1902.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    18/455 (page 2)
    during death from loss of blood. Most of the best hand-books on pathology and forensic medicine also assert that great loss of blood in men frequently brings on convulsions, and that death during such convulsions often takes place after it.^ More attention has unquestionably been paid by EngHsh physi- cians than by others to the subject of convulsions arising from loss of blood. The frightful vampyrism prevalent in the British islands may have afforded them greater opportunities of observing such dan- gerous consequences than would be presented elsewhere. Wardrop is of opinion that frequently in inflammations as much as from thu:ty to fifty ounces may be di-awn in the first venesection, and that sometimes even from loo to 200 ounces may be taken away; and Marshall HaU, from whose work on bloodletting this statement is made, mentions many cases from the practice of liimseH and others in which from 100 to lao ounces of blood were taken away m a short space of time. It is, therefore, no wonder that we have received from England the first explanations of the hydrencephaloid disease arising from exhaustion, as well as more accurate notions on con- vulsions after great losses of blood; and as Marshall Hall, that mde- fatigable investigator of the physiology and pathology of the nervous system, has gained very great renoAvn from his elucidations of the theory of bloodletting generally, so has he been the first 0 characterise the hydrencephaloid disease and to examine more closely than any one before him into the nature of convulsions arismg from ^Twcfomplished physician, in his celebrated work above referred to, remarks, that convulsions, next to swooning, are the most usua and immediate effects of great losses of blood. If W —; after venesection, the presiunption is_ that ^^^^^^^'f^^^s has been too large. In his own practice, as well as m that of others e LsXe bleedings often occasioned convulsions, wh^h endaiig^e^ the patients' lives. Travers ^ even mentions (accordmg to MarsliaU HaU) an idiosyncrasy averse to loss of blood, which manifests itself by a ^at dis^sition to convidsions. Many patients were so utterly unallfto bear abstraction of blood that they soon feU into con- 7::L rt2C:^^^^^^^ compare M HaU's expen.ent, on dogs and L numerous clinical observations published by lum. 2 ' On Constitutional Irritation,' p. 50.