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
2d. The varieties of this property, relative to temperaments, exhibit
another phenomenon almost always foreign to the animal muscular
system. In fact in this the varieties are always general; we are
able by exercise to strengthen this or that muscular region; but the
differences of forces which are natural, always influence the whole
system. The arms and the legs, the thorax and the abdomen are uniformly
contractile in the different divisions of the muscles that belong
to them. On the contrary, it is rare to see this uniformity in the
involuntary muscles. One almost always predominates over the others;
sometimes it is the heart, sometimes the stomach and sometimes the
bladder. The gastric viscera even are frequently not all at the same
level as to force. The stomach is feeble when the intestines preserve
their ordinary action; and reciprocally the intestines too contractile
expel immediately fecal matters and thus produce a diarrhœa, though
the stomach may perform its functions well. This essential difference
in the two muscular systems arises from the circumstance that the
contractility of one depends upon a common centre, the brain; whilst
that of the other on the contrary has its principle insulated in each
organ in which it exists.
_Fourth Variety. Sex._
Women in general resemble children in the phenomena of sensible organic
contractility. The weakness of the motions coincides with their greater
rapidity in this sex, all whose internal muscles, like the external,
are more delicate and less strongly developed than in man. It might
be said that the contractile power of the womb has been formed at the
expense of the forces of all the other organs. In experiments, females
give results much less decided and always less durable than males. The
motions of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. cease sooner;
these motions are less; it requires stronger stimuli to produce them,
&c.
_Fifth Variety. Season and Climate._
In winter and in cold climates, in which the cutaneous organ
contracted, and having as it were the horny hardness from the
impression of the surrounding air, has but a feeble action, all the
internal functions more active, require more energy in the forces that
preside over them; all the digestive, urinary and circulatory phenomena
are more evident. I do not know that there has yet been made any
comparative experiments upon irritability in the different seasons; but
I am persuaded that they would give different results.
_Sensible Organic Contractility considered in relation to the Action of
Stimuli upon the Organs._
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