The blood hammer phenomenon is a sudden increase of the upstream blood pressure in a blood vessel (especially artery or arteriole) when the bloodstream is abruptly blocked by vessel obstruction. The term "blood-hammer" was introduced in cerebral hemodynamics by analogy with the hydraulic expression "water hammer," already used in vascular physiology to designate an arterial pulse variety, the "water-hammer pulse."
Famous quotes containing the words blood and/or hammer:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)