General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Temperament modifies in a remarkable manner organic contractility. We
know that in some the pulsations are more frequent, the digestive and
urinary phenomena more rapid; that in others, every thing is marked by
more slowness in organic life; now these varieties have evidently their
primitive source in the varieties of the contractility of the heart,
the stomach, the intestines, &c. which have under this relation a great
influence in the difference of the temperaments. With respect to this
there are two essential observations to be made; 1st. The varieties
of force of the organic muscles do not always coincide with those of
the muscles of animal life. Thus we see an individual with feebly
developed exterior forms, with an evident weakness of the muscles of
the extremities, whilst the activity of digestion, of the urinary
evacuations, &c. announces the greatest energy in the sensible organic
contractility. I would remark with regard to this, that the heart is
more frequently in relation of force with the external muscles than the
stomach, the intestines and the bladder. A full pulse, well developed,
is usually found with an athletic constitution; whilst often this
constitution is united in the same subject to a feeble gastric system,
and especially the force of this gastric system is frequently connected
with external weakness. This fact, which the different temperaments
demonstrate to us in man, is evident in the series of animals. Those
who, like the carnivorous ones, have a very powerful animal muscular
system, have the parietes of the gastric cavities like membranes.
These parietes are strong in the herbivorous classes; they become very
conspicuous in the gallinaceous. In general, mastication over which the
animal contractility always presides, is in animals in an inverse ratio
of the force of trituration of the stomach, over which the sensible
organic contractility presides.
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