Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 3 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 3 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
The attendant conditions have much influence in determining an attack,
thus it is generally held that heat with excess of moisture is the most
injurious, yet in Cincinnati, statistics showed a greater number of
cases in man when the air was dry. The suppression of perspiration and
the arrest of cooling by evaporation in the latter case would tend to a
rapid increase of the body temperature, and the condition would be
aggravated by the electric tension usually present with the dry air.
With the hot, moist air perspiration might continue, but evaporation
would be hindered, and there would be arrest of the cooling process and
an extreme relaxation of the system.
Again, if is usually found that seizures take place during or after hard
muscular exertion in a hot period, and much importance is attached to
the attendant exhaustion, the excess of muscular waste, and the
alteration of the myosin, which latter coagulates at a lower temperature
in the overworked animal. But on the other hand, experiment shows that
the animal confined to absolute inactivity in the hot sunshine or in a
high temperature (at 90°), dies in a few hours, whereas another animal
left at liberty in the same temperature does not suffer materially. The
explanation appears to be that the dog, kept absolutely still, has the
continuous action of the heat on the same parts and on the same blood,
for the capillaries dilate, and the blood is delayed, overheated, and
surcharged with carbon dioxide, and the result is either syncope from
heart failure, or asphyxia from excessive carbonization of the blood.
Back of these and concurring with them is the paralysis of the
vaso-motor and heat generating nerve centres, from the high temperature
or the condition of the blood.
The excessive carbonization of the blood deserves another word. The
prolonged contact of the blood and air in the lungs is essential to the
free interchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Vierordt showed that with
sixty respirations per minute the expired air became charged with but
2.4 per cent. of this gas, whereas with fourteen respirations it
contained 4.34 per cent. Therefore, with violent muscular work (which
charges the blood with carbon dioxide) and rapid breathing (which fails
to secure its elimination), the overdriven animal soon perishes from
asphyxia. Under a high temperature of the external air, this condition
is aggravated since the rarefied air contains just so much the less
oxygen, the absorption of which is the measure of the exhalation of
carbon dioxide.
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