Digitalis : its mode of action, and its use : an enquiry illustrating the effect of remedial agents over diseased conditions of the heart : the Hastings prize essay of the British Medical Association for 1870 / by J. Milner Fothergill.

  • Fothergill, John Milner, 1841-1888.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Digitalis : its mode of action, and its use : an enquiry illustrating the effect of remedial agents over diseased conditions of the heart : the Hastings prize essay of the British Medical Association for 1870 / by J. Milner Fothergill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    great susceptibility to medicines, and the case with which experiments could be carried on. Dybkowsky and Pellikan abroad, and Hilton Pagge and Stevenson in England, experimented largely on them, with uniform results as regards the state of contraction of the heart observed. The manner in which the writer experimented was this: The frog having been firmly secured to a piece of lath by a bandage, leaving' the chest exposed, the chest was then opened with a pair of scissors up the middle; the heart usually appeared through the incision, and was readily cleared of its pericardium. It thus beat with much re- gularity, apparently not much affected by temperature or air. It may not be out of place here to state that, when thus exposed, the cardiac contraction was clearly seen to be a swiftly passing peristaltic action, commencing in the auricle (as first described by Schiff and corroborated by Valentin), and passing rapidly on to the ventricle. The complete distension of the auricle stimulated it to con- tract in the direction towards the ventricle; this action, driving still more blood into the already distended ventri- cle, produced such distension of it as stimulated it to con- traction ; after the systole came a period of muscular rest, during which the blood poured from the distended veins into the lax chambers, until the the distension of the auricle led to a general systole. Digitalis was then ad- ministered by the mouth, or hypodermically, and its effects were quickly apparent. First, the contractions be- came somewhat quicker, and the contraction more com- plete ; and here it may be stated that, whatever may be the normal state of the human heart in systole, certainly the frog’s is not thoroughly emptied, and is still dark coloured from the colour of the contained blood, showing through the transparent walls, which are quite white