The operative treatment of intra-thoracic effusion / by Norman Porritt.

  • Porritt, Norman, 1858-
Date:
[1883?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The operative treatment of intra-thoracic effusion / by Norman Porritt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    23/328 page 7
    persists through the length of the Thorax, and is deserving of notice, as the lung when compressed is usually- pushed into it. The shape and relative size of this cul de sac may be seen from the following drawings of casts of the Thorax at different heights. [See Fig i.) In the healthy subject the lobes of the lungs spreading out fill the space thus left ; and in abnormal conditions, whether from pressure upon the surface of the lung by extraneous matter effused within the pleura, from cirrhotic disease, or the supervention of the condition known as atelectasis, the compressed or collapsed lung, if unadherent to the remainder of the chest-wall, generally reaches the inner or spinal side of this fossa. This region, therefore, should be carefully exammed before the chest is perforated by an iustrument. The Thorax is separated from the abdomen by a musculo-tendinous structure, the diaphragm, whose convex upper surface forms the floor of the Thorax. Arising from the whole of the circumference of the Thorax it forms its lower limit externally, but, from this boundary, the fibres ascend from every point to the tendinous centre reaching on forced expiration on the right side as high as the level of the 4th cartilage, on the left about an inch lower. Figure 2. In the dead subject its highest point is the upper border of the 5th costal cartilage on the right side, and the upper border of the 6th on the left. During inspiration it descends one or two inches, and its slope would be represented by a line drawn from the ensiform cartilage to the loth rib posteriorly. The accom- panying drawing of a cast of the Thorax at death will convey to the reader these figures more clearly and demonstrate that but a com- paratively small portion of Thorax at death. (After Hutchinson)
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3