Watson, Allan

2019-02-15T14:26:04Z

2019-02-15T14:26:04Z

1914

The investigations hereafter recorded were made with the object of determining what effect, if any, certain drugs, commonly supposed to act as blood pressure elevators, have on the systolic and diastolic pressure of healthy individuals. lay observations have been limited to the immediate effect of the drugs experimented with, as one of the objects of the research was to endeavor to compare their values as possible remedies for combating dangerous hypotension. Most of the statements made regarding the pressor action of certain medicaments are based on the results of laboratory experiments on animals, and the conclusions so formed, as has been frequently demonstrated, do not always hold when drugs are given to patients in ordinary doses. My observations have been made on persons with normal arterial tension rather than on patients suffering from marked hypotension; partly because of the difficulty or impossibility in such cases of insuring with reasonable certainty that the blood pressure of the patient remains unaffected by anything but the drug administered, but chiefly because the condition of the vessels in cases of marked hypotension . has not yet been definitely determined. Until recently Crile's theory (Surgical Shock, 1899), that the vessels are relaxed in those cases as a result of exhaustion of the vaso-motor centre, has been generally accepted; but the opposite view first put forward by Malcolm (The Physiology of Death from Traumatic Fever, 1893), that there is a general contraction of the vessels, has now many supporters. Most of my observations were made on the effect of drugs on my own blood pressure. I am 26 years of age, in sound health, and have an average systolic and diastolic pressure of about the generally accepted normal. In a few instances the conclusions arrived at were confirmed by observations made on other healthy individuals. In order that the results obtained might be comparable, every care was taken during the investigations to maintain as nearly identical conditions as practicable, and to exclude as well as possible all transitory factors influencing the normal arterial tension. There is not, as far as I am aware, any published record of a similar series of investigations, but Edgecombe (Practitioner, April 1911, pp. 531 -536) has recorded his observations on the sustained effect of certain reputedly pressor drugs when administered for several days to a subject with a persistently low blood pressure.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/34353

The University of Edinburgh

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2019 Block 22

Some observations on the effect of certain drugs on the human blood pressure

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

MD Doctor of Medicine