The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    117/684 (page 91)
    CAPILLARIES 9* entrusted only to expert advice and | treatment. A scare once prevailed that raw tomatoes were a cause of cancer. It is difficult to under- stand how such a theory could impose upon any intelligent person. Of course there is not the slightest reason to impute such results to eating so wholesome an article as a tomato. CAPILLARIES (Latin, capillus, “ hair ; ” from caput, “ the head ”). These minute tubes branch in every direction throughout the body. They vary very much in size, some of them being no more than the 5000th part of an inch in diameter : the most common size, however, is about the 3000th of an , inch. The minute tubes may some- i times be seen in the white of the eye when it is bloodshot. In this state of the white of the eye the little capillaries are gorged with the red globules of the blood. The differ- ence between a minute capillary and a minute artery consists in this, that an artery has three coats, but a capillary has only one coat, which consists of a very delicate trans- parent membrane with little dots, or nuclei, in it. CARBOLIC ACID This is a colourless, oily fluid which is much used for purposes of deodorization and disinfection ; when weak, its smell is rather pleasant. It is prepared from coal- tar. The solid acid may be placed in a saucer about the room, or, still better, so ne of the solution may be sprinkled about. It conceals all odour, arrests putrefactive changes, and has the power of stopping the growth of fungi. For application to wounds as an antiseptic lotion it should be used diluted with water in the proportion of 1 in 40 ; i.e. half an ounce of carbolic acid to one pint of water. CARBONIC ACID, HOUSEHOLD TEST FOR It is well known that carbonic acid gas is present in air, as it is breathed out of our lungs, and the following method has been devised for testing the amount of its impurity. It is called Dr. Angus Smith’s household test for carbonic acid, and is applied as follows :— Procure a bottle holding ten and a half fluid ounces, fill it with the air of the room you wish to examine, by blowing it in with a bellows or sucking it in through a glass tube pushed down to the bottom of the vial ; pour in half an ounce of lime- water, and, after corking tightly, shake well for two or three minutes. If, after a short time, there is no milky appearance of the lime- water, you may know to a certainty that the ten ounces of air in the bottle do not contain enough car- bonic acid to form a visible precipi- tate of carbonate of lime (chalk) in the lime-water, and this has been proved by careful experiment on a large scale to be equal to less than of one per cent, of carbonic acid in the sample of air tested ; a quantity which has been agreed upon by high sanitary authorities as the limit beyond which the accumulation of this impurity (and others, perhaps much more noxious, which seem always to accompany it when it arises from human or animal respiration) is injurious to health and should not be permitted to occur. CARBUNCLE (Latin, carbunculus, “ little coal ”). A carbuncle is most frequently