Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from On the Direct Influence of Medicinal and Morbific Agents: Upon the Muscular Tissue of the Blood-Vessels
The several tissues of the body manifest varied and delicate differences of reaction to the agents employed in their study. These differences, due to molecular constitution, they doubtless possessed, with others. Of still greater delicacy, while forming a part of the living organism, rendering them subject to the variations of nutrition or function; which are the essential elements in all medicinal action. The in?uence of sulpho-cyanide of potassium and of upas upon the voluntary muscles, that of strychnine upon the afferent nerves, and that of wourara upon the motor nerves, give proof of relations subsisting between these substances and tissuesrespectively which other tissues do not share, or in which they participate to but a slight extent. The power of carbonic oxide gas to paralyze the blood corpuscles, rendering them inert in haematosis, and that of a temper ature of 115° Fahrenheit to paralyze and make rigid the voluntary muscles, while the same temperature leaves the motor nerves intact, lend further proof of the independent vital reactions of the different anatomical elements of the body. That these relations should be more familiar to physiologists than to practitioners is simply because they have been studied by the for mer; that many of the most familiar and most useful articles of the materia medica have like relations I propose to show. Similar considera tions are applicable to the generation of diseases. The development of the Trichina Spiralis in the striated muscles exclusively, its presence ceasing, as I have seen it, with the upper third of the oesophagus, leaving the remain der of an apparently homogeneous canal uninfested, is a type of the mode in which other less vitalized morbific agents seek out certain tissues of particular physical or molecular constitution upon which to exert their activitv.
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