A handbook of legal medicine intended for the use of the legal profession / by William Sellers.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A handbook of legal medicine intended for the use of the legal profession / by William Sellers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    to a vessel wliicli carries blood away from the heart, whilst a vein is a vessel which carries blood hack to the heart. It will also he noticed that whilst speaking generally the veins carry impure blood and the arteries pure blood, the pulmonary veins carry the pure blood, the pulmonary arteries the impure blood. The reasons for this will appear later. If a finger he placed on one of the superficial arteries in a living person, it will he felt to heat or pulsate synchronously with the beats of the heart. This pulsation in the arteries is caused by the forcible closure of the ventricles, which drives a new supply of blood into vessels already partially filled, and which vessels, being composed of elastic tissue, relax with the pressure. During the passage of the blood through the capillaries, the force of the heart-beats become gradually lost, and therefore in the veins there is no pulsation, and the blood flows in a steady stream. This point may he of importance in attempting to discover the source of bleeding from a wound, and in ascertaining whether the haemorrhage be arterial or venous. The regurgitation of blood from the ventricles into the auricles when the contraction of the ventricles has ceased and tliey have begun to expand, and from the vessels into the ventricles, is prevented by membranous partitions called the valves of the heart. When these are imperfect or diseased, serious symptoms may arise, and such valvular diseases are among common causes of sudden death. The heart itself lies in a hag of fibrous tissue called the pericardium. Haemorrhage or bleeding is one of the com-