Polymastism : with special reference to mammae erraticae and the development of neoplasms from supernumerary mammary structures / by W. Roger Williams.

  • Williams, William Roger, 1854-1948.
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Polymastism : with special reference to mammae erraticae and the development of neoplasms from supernumerary mammary structures / by W. Roger Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sented as a conical swelling, the size of a walnut, just below the left acromion, over the convexity of the deltoid muscle. It had a rudimentary nipple, but no areola. Microscopic examination revealed acinous gland tissue like that of the normal mamma. Puech 1 refers to a case by Scalzi, from an Italian source, in which an aged woman, who was admitted into hospital for a scalp wound, was found to have a rudimentary supernumerary mamma on the right shoulder, near the axilla, and another below the left breast. Her daughter had a supernumerary milk-giving mamma. An analogous case, in the lower limb, has been recorded by Robert of Marseilles. The patient was a woman, aged 50, with a supernumerary milk- giving mamma on the outer side of the upper part of the left thigh, 4 inches below the great trochanter. The case was examined and reported upon by Mageudie,2 * for the French Academy of Science. The real nature of the supernumerary gland was only discovered after her first confinement, when it attained the size of half a lemon, and secreted milk. She had previously noticed in this situation, “un petit corps arrondi qui a toujours ete le siege de douleurs et de demaugeaisons, commes les seins memes aux epoques de ses regies.” The gland had a nipple, like the normal ones, so that she could suckle her children as well with it as with them. Strange to relate this woman’s mother had a supernumerary pectoral mamma on the right side. The position of the redundant gland in this case reminds us of the so-called glandulafemoralis of the male Ornithorhynchus ; of Capromys foumieri, which has, in addition to a mamma behind each axilla, two others “ en avant des cuisses, tout 4 fait sur le c6te et plus pres du dos que du ventre; ”8 and of the Mare and Ass, which have the mam in a3 in the groins, far in front of the vulva. Here also it seems tolerably certain that we hate to do with an aberrant form of reversion. The above case has often been erroneously cited as an example of inguinal mamma—a condition which, according to Leichtenstern, has never been observed in any human being. Not long since, however, Blanchard4 referred to an unpublished case of Professor Testut’s, in which this anomaly was met with. It occurred in a woman in the lying-in hospital of Bordeaux. She had a true supernumerary mamma on the antero-internal aspect of the right thigh, a short distance below the fold of the groin. During lactation this gland increased in size and secreted milk freely. I have not met with the detailed account promised by M. Testut, but, for the sake of science, I hope it will be forthcoming. As previously mentioned mammae exclusively inguinal are typical 1 Puech, Les mamellis et leurs anomalies, Paris, 1876, pp. 72 and 117. 2 Jour. Gen. de Mid., t. c. (1827), p. 57. s Milne-Edwards, Op. cit., p. 132. 4 Bull, de la Soc. d'jfnihropologic, t. viii. (1885), p. 230.
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