~ Improved Instrument for Venous Injection. . 115 
mesentery, and large bloodvessels,” and also by his further allusion 
to the horrors of a death after the injections, which he remarks, are 
too terrific for delineation even by a Fuseli.” Are not the results 
above quoted mainly the consequence of the presénce of air in the 
bloodvessels? From a perusal of the interesting communication of 
Dr. J. C. Warren, illustrative of the appalling effects of such an ac- 
cident on the system, as fully reported in the August number of the 
American Journal of the Medical Sciences, and the Boston Medical 
Magazine for 1832, we are still more of the opinion that our first im- 
pressions were correct. 
_ Air in the heart and bloodvessels, and sufficient in quantity to be 
perceived and noted in post obit examinations !—4t certainly did not 
exist in a free state in the blood, nor could it have been absorbed by 
the liquor and afterwards disengaged and thus rendered free; the 
temperature 113° of Fahrenheit, at which it was ejected, precludes 
the possibility of such a phenomenon. Whence came it then but 
through the imperfections of the instruments employed? I allude 
not to the more recent very ingenious arrangement (the barometer 
tube, &c.) of Dr. Depeyre, of New York, and adopted by him to 
~ avoid the very terrific effects above described,—an instrument admi- 
rably calculated to avoid the introduction of air, and not otherwise 
objectionable than from the manifest inconvenience of its use, the 
want of portableness. Air being inadmissible to the bloodvessels 
(though i in ever so small quantities) without imminent danger to life 
in a healthy state of the functions, how necessary must it be to ex- 
clude it altogether in an operation intended for the relief of that state 
where the vital and physical powers (extremely prostrated and re- 
acting tardily) are but feebly calculated to resist even present disease, 
that superinduced gesioially by the very means put in re- 
quisition for effecting relief. — . 
My object in addressing you is to communicate, for insertion in 
your useful and widely extended Journal, the plan of an instrument 
for venous injections which is deemed to be eminently arranged for 
general use, being safe, convenient, and portable ; and if its publica- 
tion should in any degree subserve the purposes for which it was in- 
tended, the ends of the writer will have been fully attained. 
From the experiments which have been instituted by Latta, Crai- 
gie and Mackintosh abroad, and those more recently performed in 
this country, we cannot longer doubt the recuperative effects of prop- 
ér and judicious venous — in aggravated cases of asphyxiated 
