Arterial Hypertonus, Sclerosis and Blood Pressure (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...of cases, the vessel contraction with which we are dealing--this is the main objective evidence suppUed by the examination of the circulatory system, and, when present, the haemomanometer reading is high, that is to say, high as compared with what it records when the condition is removed and the vessel contraction relaxed. The symptoms and degree of discomfort caused by the absorption of the substances referred to varies within extraordinarily wide limits. Some persons are remarkably sensitive to the toxins under consideration. Old people are more sensitive than young or middle-aged people. It might naturally be assumed that individuals of the definitely nervous type would always suffer most, and that the labouring class would be but little susceptible to them. While this assumption cannot be altogether set aside as incorrect, I am often surprised to find amongst the out-patients coming to me at the Royal Infirmary individuals of the labouring class suffering so profoundly from intestinal auto-intoxication as to be unfit for work. In some persons the manifestations of intoxication are so pronounced that they indicate a definite idiosyncrasy, an individual chemico-vital susceptibility, which is not, so far as can be seen, a matter determined by social class distinctions or by occupation. The question that emerges from the relations here submitted as subsisting between alimentation, the fate of food in the alimentary tract, and the effect upon the composition of the blood of absorption from that tract is: How much is the effect upon the vessels to be attributed to the normal reflex acting through the vasomotor centre in the medulla, and how much to the direct influence on the vessels of substances present in the blood? Which, for instance, of these is the mai...