Third series of cases illustrating the pathology of the pulmonary disease frequent among certain classes of operatives exposed to the inhalation of dust / by Edward Headlam Greenhow.

  • Edward Headlam Greenhow
Date:
1868-69
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Third series of cases illustrating the pathology of the pulmonary disease frequent among certain classes of operatives exposed to the inhalation of dust / by Edward Headlam Greenhow. 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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    tinued. On the other hand, a continuance of the mechanical irrita- tion rarely fails sooner or later to induce those changes in the interstitial tissue of the lungs seen in the several specimens which I have exhibited to the Society on the present and former occasions. The characters common to all these cases are that the pleura is generally somewhat thickened over a greater or less extent, and that pleural adhesions are frequent. The density of the lungs is gene- rally more or less increased, and patches of consolidation of various sizes are found in their substance. Sometimes the greater part of a lobe is so consolidated, as in both lungs of the Tipton coal-miner (see page 1) ; but more frequently the consolidation is of smaller extent, and is distributed throughout the lungs in several, sometimes many, well-defined hard nodules, varying in size from a hemp-seed upwards to that of a walnut, or even larger. The consolidated tissue, whether forming small nodules or occupying the greater part of a lobe, cuts with a smooth dry section, and, unless where the oriiices of divided bronchial tubes are visible, presents no resem- blance to ordinary lung-tissue, all traces of the vesicular structure being obliterated. On section, the nodules are sometimes of an iron-grey or greyish-yellow colour, but more commonly black, or nearly so, from the abundant deposit of pigment in their tissues; in many cases they are seen with the naked eye, and in almost all cases with the microscope, to he intersected by bands or lines of fibrous tissue. When the smaller nodules are cut across, the orifice of a divided bronchial tube is generally seen in the middle of the nodule, showing apparently that the consolidation has commenced imme- diately around the tube. The bronchial tubes in the consolidated tissue are frequently dilated and thickened, and are seen, as in the flax-dresser's lung. No. II (page 9), to stand out prominently above the level of the cut surface, surrounded by a black dense case, consistiug of the indurated and deeply-pigmented tissue immediately around the tubes. When the tube is of small size, it is only on close examination that its orifice can be discovered in the centre of the black projection. Even those parts of the lungs which are still crepitant are for the most part denser and less elastic than normal lung, and they are also very frequently traversed by fibrous bands or tracts similar to those seen in the nodules. In some specimens these tracts are narrow and not very visible to the naked eye, but in others they are broad and very obvious, as in the specimens of grinders' and colliers' lungs exhibited by me to the Society in
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