General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3) — John Shaqi
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Sympathy has, as we know, the greatest influence upon heat. According
as this or that part is affected, there is disengaged in others more
or less of their fluid. An icy coldness often takes place in syncope.
Ulcerations of the lungs produce a burning in the palms of the hands.
In other affections, the head seems to be the seat of the greatest
heat. In a fever frequently the patient is hot in one place and cold in
another. How does all this happen? in this way; the affected organ acts
sympathetically on the tonic forces of the part; these being raised,
more caloric than usual is disengaged; it is precisely the same as in
sympathetic secretions or exhalations. Whether the vital forces are
raised by a stimulus directly applied, or by the sympathetic influence
they receive, the effect that results from it is exactly the same.
It is necessary to distinguish this sympathetic increase of heat, from
those that are produced by an aberration of perception, as when we
think we are very hot or cold in a part, or experience even a sensation
exactly analogous to those that are natural, though the part to which
we refer this sensation may be in its natural state, there being
neither more or less caloric disengaged in it. It is as when we think
we feel pain in the amputated extremity of a limb. It is an aberration
of perception; it is truly a sympathy of animal sensibility, whereas
the preceding is a sympathy of insensible organic contractility or
tone. It is this last property that is affected; the disengagement of
caloric is a consequence; it takes place as usual, like the perception
that indicates its presence. Another person's hand applied on the
part, feels nothing new in the first case, of which I shall say more
in the following systems; it experiences a warmer sensation in this.
So if the effect of the sympathetic influence is to diminish the tonic
forces, there will be a less local disengagement of this fluid, which
will be equally perceptible to the individual and to any other person
who applies his hand to the part. Diseases continually furnish us with
examples of these phenomena in relation to heat, and no other theory
than the one now given would be able to explain them.
There is a phenomenon that is as difficult to be well understood by
this theory as any other; it is the faculty animals have of resisting
external heat. Every inert body is of the same temperature as the
medium which surrounds it. Every organized body on the contrary repels
the caloric that tends to raise it to a higher temperature than its
own. Perhaps this belongs to the laws of the propagation of caloric, of
which we are ignorant.
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