Substance of the investigations regarding cholera asphyxia : with cases and dissections / communicated by Prof. Delpech, and Dr. Coste of Montpelier, and Dr. Lowenhayn of Moscow, during their residence in this country. To which are added, observations on the disease in Edinburgh, and the neighbouring districts.

  • Lizars, John, 1787?-1860
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Substance of the investigations regarding cholera asphyxia : with cases and dissections / communicated by Prof. Delpech, and Dr. Coste of Montpelier, and Dr. Lowenhayn of Moscow, during their residence in this country. To which are added, observations on the disease in Edinburgh, and the neighbouring districts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sometimes even of the pneumo-cardiac plexus. These alterations, which had been anticipated by Loder, and which I and my companions have demonstrated by dissection, are rendered more important by the result of your investigations, undertaken at our request, and which have confirmed their existence. These researches are difficult, and are liable to be neglected amid the confusion always caused by a severe and extensive epidemic ; so that the progress of science, with reference to this point, might be retarded, were not this fortunate discovery to receive the necessary attention from individuals of sufficient authority. Your extensive knowledge and ardent zeal give me entire confidence. If there be an important truth in what we have seen, it will benefit science, on those unhappily too frequent occasions which at this moment offer themselves to the medical men of a country so advanced in civilization, since you have become sensible of its value. The entire theory of the disease may be conceived by viewing the morbid alteration of which we here speak, in connection with the symptoms of cholera. An intense, fixed pain, limited to a very narrow space, which corresponds exactly to the point of the linea alba, directly over the extremity of the ninth and sixteenth ribs, always precedes the manifestation of the other symptoms. You are aware, that this point corresponds exactly to the situation of the central point of the ganglionary nerve. The diminution of the circulation is the first pheno¬ menon that succeeds. There are, as yet, no evacua¬ tions ; the blood is still entire ; yet the arteries pulsate feebly, their diameter diminishes, and these weakenings of the circulating power at first manifest themselves