Observations on the nature of malignant cholera, with a view to establish correct principles of its preventions and treatment : drawn up at the request of the Westminster Medical Society / by A. P. W. Philip.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the nature of malignant cholera, with a view to establish correct principles of its preventions and treatment : drawn up at the request of the Westminster Medical Society / by A. P. W. Philip. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the secretions of the bowels, kidneys^ &c. In the act of blushing and other phenomena also, we see the immediate power of the nervous system over the minute vessels. Thus of the vessels of vital organs the most minute, or, as they are termed, capillary vessels, are those most influenced by the nervous system ; and hence it is that in malignant cholera, we often find from dissection, an almost universal tendency to inflammation in those organs. I had occasion to make many experiments, an account of which the reader will find in the introduction to the fourth edition of my Treatise on Symptomatic Fevers, from which it appears that the immediate cause of inflammation is a loss of power in the capillary vessels of the part, in conse- quence of which they suffer themselves to be morbidly dis- tended by the force of the circulation, the immediate effect of which is, that the heart and larg'er vessels are, through the medium of the nervous system, excited to increased action, for the purpose of supporting the motion of the blood in the debilitated capillaries. It is thus that, except in those cases where the cause of the disease is so powerful, as at an early period to subdue the whole circulaling-powers, some degree of re-action is observed, when the morbid distension of the capillaries of the vital organs is established. It appears, from the whole of the facts which have been laid before the reader, that when a sudden and powerfully debilitating cause acts on the nervous system, it immediately impairs the whole powers of circulation, and particularly the vessels of vital organs, and of these the capillaries more than the larger vessels. When, however, the cause is extreme, the power of all the vessels of the part are so debilitated, that the larger vessels are incapable of propelling the blood into the debi- litated capillaries with such force as to distend them ; in consequence of which the blood accumulates in the larger vessels themselves, and a state of congestion, which has little or no tendency to excite re-action, rather than inflam- mation of these organs takes place.