Profusion

“ The statement of the conditions of the problem suffices to suggest its solution; the blood is a medium whence the glands draw the principles of their growth and functions; the circulation of the sanguine fluid within the glandular tissue is a true transfusion kept up incessantly by the heart, and which only artificial transfusion can be a substitute for. ”

“ Transfusion again comes up, but not with its old extravagant pretensions; it no longer aspires to give universal, indefinite life. Reduced to the simple duty of a scientific process, it unveils the most mysterious secrets of the organization; it throws light upon the life of the parts; it demonstrates that each element in the organism lives of itself, and finds in the blood the conditions required for its action.—Revue des Deux Mondes. ”

“ The demonstration by physiology of the individual life of the parts, and the practical applications of transfusion, are wholly modern, as the circulation of the blood itself is. In ancient days the general belief was, that the life dwells in the blood, and yet some ancients seem to have had a suspicion that the elements of the organization live of themselves, and that, perhaps, the blood has a movement of circulation. ”

“ In modern medical science, the transfusion of blood has become a well-recognized operation for cases of exhaustion from simple loss of blood. For this it is frequently practiced, and with success in the majority of cases. For general weakness and disease it has sometimes been used, but has not proved reliable. ”

“ The patient is near his finish!
Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new vitality! Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to inject into its veins, the new white corpuscles that were a cancer in another organism will withstand all the depravity of the system, will withstand the blood-lettings that it suffers every day, will have more stamina than all the eight million red corpuscles, will cure all the disorders, all the degeneration, all the trouble in the principal organs. ”

“ Receiving new blood as a means of receiving new life, seems to have been sought interchangeably, in olden time, in various diseases, by blood lavations, by blood drinking, and by blood transfusion. It is recorded that, in 1483, King Louis XI., of France, struggled for life by drinking the blood of young children, as a means of his revivifying. ”

“ How excellent are the mechanical aids we have applied to the human body, as in dentistry, in vaccination, in the rhinoplastic treatment; in the beautiful aid of ether, like a finer sleep; and in the boldest promiser of all,—the transfusion of the blood,—which, in Paris, it was claimed, enables a man to change his blood as often as his linen! ”

“ The experience of transfusion gains greater importance at this day, proportioned to the advanced state of science. Transfusion is not simply an operation practised on man; it finds its peculiar reason for existing as a process in scientific investigation. By it the properties of tissues and organs are analyzed, the independent life of the elements is once more made plain, and, when the secrets of the mechanism of our organization have thus been laid bare, transfusion is no longer an experimental remedy—it has become a process of reasoning. ”

“ As physicians sometimes tried to restore life to an almost dead man by the transfusion into his shrunken veins of the fresh warm blood from a young and healthy subject, so into our fevered life, into our corrupted blood, there is poured the full tide of the pure and perfect life of Jesus Christ Himself, and we live, not by our own power, nor for our own will, nor in obedience to our own caprices, but by Him and in Him, and with Him and for Him. ”

“ This reviving power of the blood seems to reside in the corpuscles; for transfusion, when attempted to be performed with the serum alone, has, in every case, proved fruitless. Now, though so much depends upon the blood and its corpuscles, it is a mistake to suppose that in them alone is the seat of life, or that they are, in an exclusive manner, alive. All the organs and parts of the body are mutually dependent one upon the other ”

“ As much care, therefore, must be exercised in testing the blood groups of members of the same family before performing a transfusion as would be taken before using a donor who is not related to the patient. ”

“ We have sometimes found in the Shops of our Druggists, a certain Wood, which is there called Lignum Nephriticum, because the Inhabitants of the Country where it grows, are wont to use the Infusion of it made in fair Water against the Stone of the Kidneys, and indeed an Eminent Physician of our Acquaintance, who has very Particularly enquir'd into that Disease, assures me, that he has found such an Infusion one of the most effectual Remedyes, which he has ever tried against that formidable Disease. ”

“ In the selection of a donor for transfusion, people fall into definite groups. Tests of blood must be made first to see whether it 'agglutinates,' and in this respect there are four classes of persons. ”

“ Now, saith he, though the new Blood, which is given in the Transfusion, undergoes not the first Concoction, made in the Stomach, yet it suffers the two others, in making many Circulations together with the native blood; and that therefore nothing hinders, but it may be fit to be changed into the substance of Man, without inconvenience. ”

“ Others, considering the pain in his Kidneys during the Transfusion and the swelling of his Stomach, which was presently follow'd by Evacuations above and below, do believe, that the new Blood entring in great quantity, caused a plenitude, and a fermentation in the great Vessels, which could not but be follow'd by all those effects. To which may be added, that almost all those, into whose Veins other Liquors than blood have been injected, have found the same Accidents. ”

“ Lastly, when the disease has proceeded so far that the blood flows out from all parts of the body, and it is evident that the patient must die were it only from the loss of that fluid, then, if ever, the once celebrated remedy of the transfusion of blood may be of use. An account of this remedy has been given in the former part of this work. It must be evident that human blood ought to be preferred to that of a brute creature; but the danger incurred by one who should lose a quantity of blood so near to a person capable of giving the febrile infection must certainly be very great. ”

“ An added force is given to all these illustrations of the universal belief that transferred blood has a vivifying power, by the conclusions of modern medical science, concerning the possible benefits of blood-transfusion. [233] On this point, one of the foremost living authorities in this department of practice, Dr. Roussel, of Geneva, says: “The great vitality of the blood of a vigorous and healthy man has the power of improving the quality of the patient’s blood, and can restore activity to the centres of nervous force, and the organs of digestion. ”

“ And taking for granted, that no considerate man will hazard a Total Transfusion, he acknowledges that a Partial one may be in some cases and sicknesses very useful; provided; it be practised circumspectly, upon a Body yet strong enough, and in a moderate quantity, so as the Spirits and Blood of the Recipient may be able to dissolve and master the transfused strange Blood, and convert the same into its own nature by a gentle Ebullition; to obtain by such a commixture principle of motion, that may cause a better habit of Body. ”

“ It is not simply the outward form of an animal which I can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature, may also be made to undergo an enduring modification,—of which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examples that will, no doubt, be familiar to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood,—with which subject, indeed, I began. ”

“ All reasonable medical men, both of ancient and modern times, have believed in a mutual transfusion, or accession and recession of the blood between the arteries and the veins; and for the sake of permitting this, they have imagined certain inconspicuous openings, or obscure foramina, through which the blood flowed hither and thither, moving out of one vessel and returning to it again. Wherefore it is not wonderful that Riolanus should in various places find that in the ancients which is in harmony with the doctrine of a circulation. ”

“ If there is a failure of renewal—that is, a disease—we shall generally find an abnormal condition of the blood. The distribution of the blood is controlled by the heart, a great four-chambered pump. One chamber drives the blood to the lungs, a mass of fine porous membranes, where it comes into contact with the air, and gives off the poisons which it has accumulated in its course through the body, and takes up a fresh supply of oxygen. By another chamber of the heart the blood is then sucked out of the lungs, and by the next chamber it is driven to every corner of the body. ”

“ And clinical triumphs have confirmed scientific views, which find their reasonable explanation partly in our knowledge of the normal life of the elements, partly in the morbid changes they are subject to. Transfusion of blood has sometimes served as an heroic remedy for arterial hæmorrhages, and losses of blood occurring after confinement. In these situations there is no injury to the elements of the nervous tissues, the glands and muscles; thus the supply of new blood restores life to them ”

“ These mucusless, nourishing and "laxative," that is dissolving foods, form new blood; the best blood that has ever run through your veins--and at once start the so-called constitutional cure of the body. ”

“ A physiological dissection, like that which transfusion of blood may be said, in some sort, to perform upon the glandular, nervous, and muscular systems, how complete soever it may be, has no value, unless the results of the analysis are combined; the experimental cutting up of the human body ought to end by recomposing the whole of it. ”

“ Blood-giving can be life-giving. The measure of one’s love may, indeed, in such a case, be tested by the measure of his yielded blood. [236]
Roussel says, that blood transfusion was practised by the Egyptians, the Hebrews, and the Syrians, in ancient times; [237] and he cites the legend, that before Naaman came to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy, [238] his physicians, in their effort at his cure, took the blood from his veins, and replaced it with other blood. ”

“ INDICATIONS FOR BLOOD TRANSFUSION The indications for blood transfusion are gradually becoming more numerous as experience of its effects accumulates, and there can be no doubt that the value of transfusion as a therapeutic measure is destined to become much more generally recognized than it is at the present time. Lack of knowledge, together with an exaggerated idea of the difficulties of the process, is the chief obstacle to its more extended use. Time and the education of the rising generation will provide the remedy for this. ”

“ So, whether it be the heart as the primal fountain of blood, or the liver as the great receptacle of blood, or the blood itself in its supposed outflowing from the heart through the liver, that is made prominent in the rites and teachings of primitive peoples, the root-idea is still the same,—that “as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof;” [701] and that as a man is in his blood, so he is in his nature ”

“ The history of transfusion in the nineteenth century, after the account of the fruitless efforts made in the seventeenth, has the advantage, besides, of allowing us to judge of the worth of methods by the nature of their results. These scientific triumphs of late date have hitherto been preserved only in special publications; but they are of too general an interest to be reserved for physiologists and physicians; they must enter into the wide domain of Science. ”

“ When, on the contrary, the glands, muscles, and nerves, are changed in the first place, and the injury to the blood is the consequence of alteration in the tissues, instead of being its cause, transfusion cannot be as serviceable; it is almost always powerless ”

“ The common Method of Cure is by Bleeding to abate the Effervescence or Colliquation of the Blood, and prevent the Tumour and Inflammation of the Lungs, by Vomits to relieve the Stomach opprest with store of ill Humours, and remove divers Obstructions of several Bowels and small Vessels, by Stomach-Purges gently to carry down the peccant Humours; and lastly by Diuretics and Diaphoretics with some mixture of an Opiate, plentifully to carry off the Colliquated Serum by Urine, or the Pores of the Skin, without raising a fresh Catarrh by a new Commotion of the Blood. ”

“ One established doctrine holds place in all these writers; that whatever by a hasty fermentation dissolves the impacted matter of the obstruction, and sends it in that state into the blood, does incredible mischief: but that whatever medicine softens it by slow degrees, and, as it melts, delivers it to the bowels without disturbance; will cure with equal certainty and safety. ”

“ What sickness is and in what way it falls on the human body, I cannot tell, O Rameses. But to thee I will explain, for thou hast been purified, how we govern ourselves in giving medicine.
“Suppose a given man to be sick in the liver. We priests know that the liver is under the star Peneter-Deva, [13] that the cure must depend on that star. ”