Vascular troubles in later life : inaugural address delivered before the Midland Medical Society, at Birmingham, on October 28, 1909 / by Sir Lauder Brunton.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Vascular troubles in later life : inaugural address delivered before the Midland Medical Society, at Birmingham, on October 28, 1909 / by Sir Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Another great part of my time was taken up with attempts to separate digestive enzymes and zymogens, especially from the pancreas, and to study the products of digestion. One day I put some minced pancreas and fibrin into a vessel afc 40° C., and left it to digest during the whole night. Next morning when we tried to enter the laboratory it was almost impossible. The place was filled with the most awful stink that it is possible to conceive. I had to rush to the windows, throw them open, and rush out again until a current of fresh air had made the place bearable. No sewer gas that I have ever come near was anything like it. In the fluid that remained I found leucin and tyrosin amongst other products of albuminous decomposition by pancreatic digestion. The importance of tyrosin will become apparent afterwards when I come to consider the causes of rise of blood pressure in later life. Indol was also present, but how much of it was due te the action of the pancreas alone, and how much to the possible co-operation of bacilli in the digesting fluid I cannot tell, because I never had the courage to repeat the experiment. Shortly before I began to work in du Bois Reymond’s. laboratory, Traube had been making in it his classical re- searches on the action of digitalis, and the kymograph which he used was still there. By its aid A. B. Meyer and I suc- ceeded in getting distinct proof that digitalis contracted the arterioles and thus raised the blood pressure (1). But the rise that we obtained was insignificant, compared with that which Professor Rosenthal one day showed me as a consequence of injecting nicotine into the veins. The pressure in the arteries rose so high as to drive the float which rested on the mer- curial column of the kymograph right out of the tube. I had never seen anything like it before, and I never saw anything like it again until Professor Schafer and Dr. Oliver showed me the action of adrenalin, and the result of injecting this into a vein was precisely similar to what I had seen in Rosenthal’s experiment with nicotine. When I went to work with Ludwig, his new Physiological Institute was just being opened, and I was present at his first lecture in it. There were very few men working in it, and he gave me much of his time, doing many of the experiments himself, teaching me how they ought to be done, and telling