This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...both directly baneful to the vascular tissue and provocative of high pressure?--a twofold mischief with which adrenalin has been credited. Many observers, as we have seen,2 attribute a considerable measure of this kind of neutralising capacity to the liver. For instance, rises in blood pressure have ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...both directly baneful to the vascular tissue and provocative of high pressure?--a twofold mischief with which adrenalin has been credited. Many observers, as we have seen,2 attribute a considerable measure of this kind of neutralising capacity to the liver. For instance, rises in blood pressure have been vaguely attributed to falling alkalinity of the blood, and certainly the liver seems able to destroy sarcolactic acid; on the other hand, Bayliss and Starling extracted a substance from the intestinal wall which, on intravenous injection, lowered the blood pressure, ' and this substance also the liver neutralised. I remember Roger and Josue, I forget where reported, injected intestinal extract into a branch of the portal vein with no effect on the arterial pressures, and concluded that the liver protects the system. In obstinate constipation and in dilated colon the arterial pressures do not rise. The patient is usually meagre and sallow, the eyeballs yellow, and the orbits darkly ringed; some hyperpietics are of spare and sallow habit, but the majority are plump and ruddy complexioned. Choline does not raise pressure but lowers it; partly by reducing cardiac energy, partly by dilating the peripheral vessels; if atropin be previously administered, by plus output per minute and splanchnic constriction, the fall is converted to an augmentation. We may assume then that the liver, and active muscle likewise, can destroy pressor substances, adrenalin for instance; and, by destroying them or sparing them, make for regulation of pressures. Adrenalin indeed is used up rapidly in the act of vasoconstriction.3 And, as it seems probable that the liver is susceptible to nervous influences, if it be true that emotional causes may promote...
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