Observations on the medical and surgical agency of the air-pump : read before the British Association, in 1835 / by Sir James Murray.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the medical and surgical agency of the air-pump : read before the British Association, in 1835 / by Sir James Murray. 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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    SECTION I. CUTANEOUS TRANSPIRATION. The pores of the skin are capillary tubes, formed by processes of the cuticle, which run deep into the true skin. If cold air or damp beds induce diseases by suppressing the exhalation from these pores, derivation to the surface must be accounted a beneficial counter-indication. One principal object of encouraging that vital energy which promotes cutaneous transpiration, is, to diminish untoward temperature of the body, and to counterbalance internal determinations. Such refluxes are observed even from common perspirations, which lessen the secretion from the kidnies, nearly in proportion to the augmentation of cuticular exhalation. In inflammations, the abstraction of heat from a limb or part of the surface, by pumping off the surrounding hot air, drawing away the caloric of the patient, and admitting cold fresh air, is a very grateful and reviving process. I have frequently proved that general suction carries off a great quantity of Carbon and Hydrogen from the circulating fluid.* Common diaphoretics seem to act in two ways, first, by a general stimulus actively exciting propul- sion towards the minute capillaries of the surface, * See my paper in the London Medical Journal 7th July, 1832. B