Having referred to the fact of the lungs and skin being supplementary organs—the principal duty of both being to aerate the blood—it may be interesting to lay before our readers the following extracts from the results of Monsieur Fourcault’s experiments bearing on the subject. These experiments were made with the view of ascertaining the effect of the suppression of transpiration by the skin, in animals, on coating their bodies with an impermeable varnish. The committee of the French Institute thus describes these experiments:—
“The substances which he used were givet-glue, dextrine, pitch, and tar, and several plastic compounds; sometimes the varnish was made to cover the whole of the animal’s body, at other times only a more or less extensive part of it. The accidents which follow this proceeding are more or less complete or incomplete, general or partial. In every case the health of the animals is soon much impaired and their life in danger. Those which have been submitted to those experiments, under our observation, have died in one or two days, and in some cases in a few hours only.
“In the opinion of the committee these experiments are full of interest [[22]]for the future, * * * * the experiments of M. Fourcault cannot fail to throw a new light upon the physiological and pathological phenomena, depending upon the double function of inhalation and exhalation of the cutaneous system.”
Monsieur Fourcault himself thus writes:—
“The mucous membranes were not the only parts affected by the artificial suppression of the insensible perspiration. We also observed the production of serous effusions in the pericardium, and even in the pleuræ. These effusions thus demonstrate that dropsies are found in the same body as mucous discharges. Several dogs died with paraplegia, and could only drag themselves along on their fore paws; some died atrophied, and their lungs contained miliary tubercules, which appeared to me, from their whiteness and softness, to be of recent formation. It was, therefore, now impossible to doubt the influence of the suppression of the insensible perspiration of the skin upon the changes in the blood, the mucous and serous exudations, and finally, upon the development of local lesions.
“But the results of these experiments differ in toto according as the plastering is partial or general, or as it suspends the action of the skin incompletely or completely. In the first case, the alteration of the blood is not carried so far as to cause the dissolution of its organic elements; it can coagulate, and present, in some few cases, a buffy coat of little consistency, bearing some resemblance to that which is found in inflammatory blood. As to the tissues affected, they, however, appear to me to present the anatomical characteristics of the consequences of local inflammation.
“But when the application of very adhesive substances upon the whole of the body quickly suppresses the cutaneous exhalation, and consequently prevents the action of the air upon the skin, death takes place much more speedily, and appears to be the result of true asphyxia. The breathing of the animals experimented upon, is difficult; they take deep inspirations, in order to inhale a larger quantity of air than usual; their death is violent, and is often accompanied by convulsive movements. On dissection, we find in the veins and the right cavities of the heart, sometimes also in the left, but very rarely in the arteries, a black diffluent blood, forming sometimes into soft and diffluent coagula, and coagulating, very imperfectly, when exposed to atmospherical air. This dissolution of the blood, favours the formation of large ecchymoses and of effusions into the lungs and other organs, the capillary vessels are usually injected;—one can see that the alteration of the blood has been the true cause of the stagnation of the circulation in this order of vessels. * * * * *
“It is important to state that man, in the same way as animals, dies from cutaneous asphyxia when his body is covered by impermeable applications. I shall detail, in another work, the results of my researches upon this subject, and facts which still belong to general history will enter into the province of medicine. Thus, at Florence, when Leo X. was raised to the pontificate, a child was gilt all over, in order to represent the golden age. This unfortunate child soon died, the victim of a physiological experiment of a novel kind. I have gilded, silvered, and tinned several guinea-pigs, and all have died like the child at Florence.”
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Monsieur Fourcault, in summing up his researches, remarks as follows:—
“Nasal catarrh, diarrhœa, paralysis, marasmus, convulsive movements, and finally the phenomena of asphyxia are also the results of the same experiments. Cutaneous asphyxia may cause the death of man and animals; in this affection, the blood presents, in the highest degree, the refrigerant and stupefying qualities of VEINOUS[9] blood.”
The above extracts are our answer to those superficial medical objectors, who would argue that death is not occasioned, in the above instances, by the exclusion of atmospheric air from the system, but by the suppression of poisonous salts secreted in the skin. The effects of the suppression of the most poisonous and irritating of these is well known to the physician, but their phenomena bear no analogy to those presented in the case before us, which exhibits all the symptoms and appearance of true suffocation. If, however, the evidence of these experiments be not sufficient to convince them, that a deficient supply of air, producing suffocating symptoms, was the real cause of death in the above cases, we will be prepared to meet them on a more convenient battle-field, where arguments, which would only prove tedious and unintelligible to the non-professional reader, may be freely adduced in support of our position.
Were it not tedious to multiply instances, many more might be adduced, such as the dangerous stage of small-pox being contemporaneous with the breaking of the pustules, when the surface of the body becomes partially varnished over, and the fact that a scald or burn is dangerous, not in proportion to its depth, but breadth.
Now, if it be conceded that the main cause of consumption, tracing the disease back to its first cause, is to be found in an insufficient supply of oxygen to the system (which certainly the success attendant on the treatment based upon this theory would lead one to suppose), we would beg of our readers seriously to ask themselves how can consumption be cured by drugging, and how can the much required oxygen be supplied to the blood by any proceeding of the kind? We think that the results of such a system afford a conclusive answer to this question; failure marking its course wherever it has been tried. Again, as regards the fashionable remedy of [[24]]going abroad,[10] how are we likely to get more oxygen supplied to our blood by going abroad than by staying at home? What magic is there in the process? A mild climate may certainly prove less irritating than its native air to a diseased and disordered lung, and the suffering and uneasiness consequent on the irritation may be thereby allayed, but we are not a whit nearer being cured by this device, nor have we, in so doing, properly gone to work to remove the main spring and cause of the disease.