The Half-Yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences (13-14); Being a Digest of British and Continental Medicine, and of the Progess of Medicine

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 Excerpt: ...morbid appearances bear some resemblance to those occasioned by suffocation; but the similitude is not actual, and its exceptions are numerous. The post-mortem aspect generally indicates that the brain has been the organ chiefly affected. Its membranes are usually injected--its vessels always turgid; its substance studded with spots of blood wherever incised; and not unfrequently is there extravasation upon its surface, or effusion within its ventricles, or at its base. Comparatively with the heart and lungs, the brain is most implicated in poisoning by carbonic acid; in suffocation, the converse obtains. The mechanical act of respiration is, perhaps, not secondary to the process of oxygenation, in aiding the passage of blood through the lungs. In suffocation, this act is suspended; whilst in poisoning by carbonic acid, it continues until death. Hence, though in both cases the lungs are oqually dark, in the former they are much more congested, and more spumous when incised, than in the latter. For the same reason, we usually find all the cavities of the heart moderately full of black, fluid blood, after carbonic acid poisoning; but after suffocation, the right cavities only are distended with this fluid: the left cavities are generally empty, or, at most, contain but little blood. Though the results of my own experiments and observations lead me to the conclusion, that the indications are sufficiently obvious and precise to enable us, in the majority of cases, to distinguish between poisoning by carbonic acid and suffocation; yet, knowing how certain acknowledged pathological conditions are liable to vary, I should assuredly let this fact restrain me from the expression of an absolute opinion on the subject in point, did it involve a question of criminal re...