Cholera curable : a demonstration of the causes, non-contagiousness, and successful treatment of the disease / by John Chapman.

  • Chapman, John, 1821-1894.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera curable : a demonstration of the causes, non-contagiousness, and successful treatment of the disease / by John Chapman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    pulmonary artery, of the bronchial tubes, and of those systemic arteries distributed over those parts of the body which, during the disease, have continued most vital, and have therefore preserved the highest temperature. The blood has continued to pass through these arteries most copiously, and is thus prepared to effect their dilatation, and to flow through them in fuller currents than before, the moment the energetic stimulus from the negative motor nerves, which has kept them in a state of tonic spasm, declines or ceases. Now already, when the phenomenon in question pre- sents itself, the ganglionic nervous centres presiding over the arteries just mentioned have begun to die. Their convulsive grasp of the blood-vessels and air-tubes, which has already proved fatal to the system generally, is being relaxed, and they them- selves are sharing the fate which, through their agency, has over- taken the entire organism. A last but vain effort for life is made, however, by the structures^ released at length from the deadly influence of their excessive energy. The normal attrac- tion between the venous blood in the pulmonary arteries and the air in the air-cells generates movement of the blood through the pulmonary capillaries; it reaches the left heart, and is ihence forced most copiously into those systemic arteries just indicated, and thence, finding its way to the starving tissues, the usual vital changes occur. Meanwhile, as a result of the renewed oxy- dation occurring in the lungs, and in the parts supplied by the newly relaxed systemic arteries, heat is evolved, and constitutes the phenomenon in question. But this local struggle for life is too late: its possibility depends on the presence of death which has already invaded the nervous system, and which, soon seizing on the brain itself, closes the scene. This local increase of tem- perature before death is a strong proof that the blood-vessels are healthy; that the structures are healthy, and suffer only from lack of nourishment; that the blood itself is free from poison ; and that the disease is seated in the nervous system. The increase or long persistence of heat in the body after death, is a well-established fact. The highest temperature I have taken after death, says Mr. Mackenzie, was in a little boy ; externally, it rose to 101'8°; internally, to 106*2° ; this boy died in imperfect reaction. It is rare to find the temperature as high as this; usually it will rise to 99° in axilla, and 102° in rectum. This remarkable and very instructive phenomenon is merely the continuance and extension over the whole body, after the death of the brain, of the series of actions commenced before death, and explained in the preceding paragraph. The whole sympathetic system having ceased its functions, the arteries throughout the body relax ; the small supply of blood in them is drawn through the systemic capillaries; every particle of oxygen