Thirty-first annual report of the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June 1858.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-first annual report of the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June 1858. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/64 (page 11)
    bulged into a series of cysts full of thick curdy pus. It had contracted a number of adhesions to the stomach, spleen, and intestines. The sur¬ face of the intestines was injected and coated with flocculent lymph, and the cavity of the abdomen contained a large quantity of bloody serum. In another case, death occurred during the night from the bursting of a vomica and subsequent asphyxia by the accumulation of bursting of the effused pus in the bronchi, trachea, and mouth. He had had vomica' haemoptysis several months anterior to death. The lungs were found full of softening tubercles, which broke up under the slightest pressure; the apices of both were riddled with vomicae or abscesses, and were also generally and firmly adherent to the walls of the thorax, the pleural adhesions being very dense. A third case Avas fatal by chronic gastritis Q^stStis and the non-assimilation of food resulting therefrom. The symptoms during life led to the suspicion of ulcer of the stomach. They had been those of chronic vomiting, severe and long persistent; without, however, the appearance of Sareina in the ejesta. There was neither tumour of the pylorus nor ulcer of the stomach; but there was hyperaemia of the whole interior of the stomach, most intense about the cardia and pylorus, and on the rugae, all of which were of a deep purple tinge. The stomach contained a quantity of mucous fluid. There was also intense dark purple hyperaemia of the interior of certain parts of the intestines, with irregular contractions of others. The brain was of very firm consistence. [The case was one of Dementia], There was a large quantity of transparent serum in the ventricles; and adhesions of the Dura Mater, Avith partial effusions of lymph on the surface of the Pia Mater, made up the catalogue of appearances within the cranium. A fourth patient-—likewise an old sailor, who had been a good deal abroad—succumbed to a complication of Hepatitis, Enteritis, and Bron- Hepatitis, chitis. He had been deeply jaundiced before death, and hepatic disease of the nature of Cirrhosis Avas suspected. The liver was found to be con¬ tracted, shrunk, speckled with Avhite, and of a deep biliary tinge; it was firmly adherent to the colon and stomach. The hepatic epithelium was granular and gorged with biliary pigment; but it Avas not unusually fatty. The spleen was small, shrivelled, and easily lacerated. The patient reported, during life, that he had repeatedly suffered from ague and jaundice in warm climates. The intestines and mesentery were deeply