Volume 1

Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Royal College of Surgeons of England. Museum.

Date:: 1846-9

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$285. A small, soft, grey and black melanotic growth on the skin. It was removed from a man's shoulder, where it had existed in the form of a mole from birth. From the Museum of George Lang staff, Esq. 286. A tumour removed after death from the axilla of the patient from whom the preceding specimen was taken. The tumour is globular, lobed, and nodulated, nearly six inches in diameter, and four pounds in weight. Half of it is covered by integument, which has sloughed extensively at the most exposed part. The axillary vessels and nerves also are attached to the surface of the tumour, but are not much compressed. The texture of the tumour, which consists almost entirely of small round masses clustered together, is very soft and loose; slender shreds hang from its cut sur- faces ; and the medullary substance of which it is composed is variously shaded with grey, brown, and black, by melanotic matter. At the parts nearest to the surface over which the skin has sloughed, the tumour is pale, with scarcely any mixture of melanotic matter. In the deeper parts it is dark grey, spotted with black. Near the surface, also, there are spaces which contained blood. From the Museum of George Langstaff\ Esq. 287. Sections of a rib, in which part of the cancellous texture is frill of brownish and black medullary and melanotic substance, portions of which also pro- ject in a small tumour from its surface. The three preceding preparations, as well as Nos. 851-2, and 1409, were taken from a patient whose case is recorded by Mr. LangstafF in the ' Medico-Chirurgical Trans- actions,' vol. iii. p. 277. London, 1812. The patient was a sallow-complexioned man, thirty years old. Nearly two years before his death the small tumour on the shoulder [No. 285] ulcerated and became subject to occasional bleedings. It was removed five months before death, and the wound of the operation healed slowly. After this, two tumours, which had appeared in the axilla a fortnight before the operation, united and gradually enlarged, producing, after a month, great and increasing pain and disturbance of the health, and at length forming the great mass in No. 286. During the progress of this tumour, a portion of the distended skin ulcerated, and gave almost constant issue to the discharge of large quantities of blood and ichor; while other tumours of smaller size formed under the skin about the principal one, and in other parts.$