A contribution to physiological medicine : being an address delivered before the British Balneological and Climatological Society on May 21st, 1903 : and a preliminary communication on the measurement of tissue-lymph in man read before the Royal Society, June 11th, 1903, with additions and illustrations / by George Oliver.

  • Oliver, George, 1841-1915.
Date:
[1903]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A contribution to physiological medicine : being an address delivered before the British Balneological and Climatological Society on May 21st, 1903 : and a preliminary communication on the measurement of tissue-lymph in man read before the Royal Society, June 11th, 1903, with additions and illustrations / by George Oliver. 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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    easily determined by a method of using the haemodynamo- meter elsewhere described * ; but so far no reliable method for gauging the capillary blood-pressure has been suggested. I have, however, employed a method which is simple and practical; but as I hope to improve it I will not describe it. This method has so far shown that the capillary blood- pressure is considerably raised at the acme of the digestive circulatory wave, and that it then gradually falls during the decline of the disturbance. The rise and fall of the capillary blood-pressure, therefore, coincide with those of the arterial blood-pressure. The venous blood-pressure, on the other hand, falls during the full development of the digestive cir- culatory wave; sometimes, however, it falls immediately after the meal (A, fig. 2), but more generally it rises a little at first, concurrently with the increase of the arterial and capillary pressures, and then it falls (B, fig. 2), or it merely remains stationary, failing to rise with the other pressures (C, fig. 2). But in all cases the venous pressure rises rather suddenly after the acme of the circulatory disturbance is attained, and then it reads much higher than before the meal, and again concurs with the capillary pressure. Fig. 2 illus- trates the behaviour of the three blood-pressures after a meal. Now were the capillary pressure to subside with the venous pressure, we should infer that this concurrent fall of these blood-pressures was caused by contraction of the arterioles ; and in clinical observation equally low readings of them, along with an increase of the arterial pressure, fur- nish good evidence of the predominance of arteriolar resis- tance. But the rise in the capillary pressure excludes this cause, and this rise together with the diminished venous pressure suggest an increase of resistance beyond the capil- laries. We know that the venules and veins are endowed with muscular fibres, so that these vessels can offer a varying resistance to the onflow of blood from the capillaries. It is * See Journal of Physiology, Cambridge and London, 1898, and Blood and Blood-pressure, 1901.