Improved Instrument fo7- V^enous 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 presence 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 full}^ 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 ! — It 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 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, 

 much less that superinduced artificially 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- 

 er and judicious venous injections in aggravated cases of asphyxiated 



