Materials for an alphabet to the science of medicine : embracing an enquiry into the nature of the mind and passions : addressed to the Medical Society of Philadelphia / by James Pendleton Jun.

  • Pendleton, James.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Materials for an alphabet to the science of medicine : embracing an enquiry into the nature of the mind and passions : addressed to the Medical Society of Philadelphia / by James Pendleton Jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The departure of mechanical power uniformly precedes the exhaustion of sensorial secretion. The system may be suddenly prostrated by the operation of a powerful stimulus, which appears to suspend the excitement from the exhaustion of nervous power, before the tone of the veffels could be much injured. But this conclusion is wrong; for the suspension of action is induced by the vi- olent distension that leaves the vessels in a strug- gling state, and from which the lancet will relieve them, by restoring their spring. It is very easy to conceive that the influx of blood may be so rapid as to pro.,trate a mechanical power in a few hours, ihat might have supported a moderate excitement for more than one hundred years. Disorders proceeding from an increase of secre- tion, are exclusively attached to indirect debility, and those that require not this secretion, may be induced by either of the debilities. The operation of stimuli may be so powerful as to prostrate the excitement before a morbid secretion can be pro- duced; but the usual increase of stimuli finally produces that increase, of sensorial power on which inflammation depends, and death cannot take place until inflammation is induced*. As inflammation depends on a morbid secretion, it * Inflammation is the handmaid of disorder in all cases of indirect debilitv, that are not suddenly induced.