A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow.

  • Barlow, George Hilaro, 1806-1866.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow. 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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    II. MODES OF DEATH. There are few more important considerations in tlie treat- ment of diseases which threaten life, than that of the manner of their fatal termination when they end in death. The different modes of dying were first explained by Bichat, in his celebrated ' Becherches sur la Vie et la Mort;' but the subject was first treated of in reference to disease by Dr. Alison, of Edinburgh, and has since been elaborated with much perspicuity and elegance by Dr. Watson, in his beauti- ful lectures. A few short and simple reflections will, however, be sufiicient for our present purpose. The different modes in which life ceases are through the suspension of the two primary vital functions, circulation and respiration. Of these, the former cannot be suspended, in the human subject, for more than a few seconds, and the latter for more than three minutes, without life iDeing ex- tinguished. We perceive then that there are two simple modes of dying : I. Death from failure of the heart's action, or, to speak more comprehensively, death from failure of the moving powers of the circulation, which is technically termed syn- cope ; II. Death from impediment to the aeration of the blood in the lungs, or death from apnoea. I. Death from syncope, or death from the heart, may be produced either (1) from a sudden shock to the nervous system arresting the heart's action; or the same effect may be produced by weakness of the organ itself. The ana- tomical characters of this form of death by syncope are full cavities of the heart, with the dark blood on the right side, and the crimson arterial blood on the left. (2), By sudden or gradual abstraction of the vital stimulus of the heart, as in the case of violent hsemorrhage or its more gTadual drain by