Volume 2

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
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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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    mater everywhere on the upper part of the two hemispheres loaded with a very limpid water. On slicing off the upper part of the two hemispheres, and exposing tlie two lateral ventricles, we found them fuller of water than what is common in a perfect sound state; and also these cavities larger than common, so that the quantity of water might be three or four ounces, but perfectly clear. Some of the arteries of tlie pia mater were ossified in some parts, but not remarkably so. Every other part of the brain appeared to be perfectly sound. The lungs did not adhere in any part to the pleura excepting at their upper points. They appeared sound everywhere, excepting on the right side, [wliere] a part on tiie lower lobe was more dense than common, or even any other part of the same lungs : liowever, this appeared to be owing only to extravasated water in the cellular membrane of that part. The posterior part of the cavity of the chest on the same side was smeared over with red blood, but we saw no appearance of ruptured vessels. On examining the heart, we found, at the apex of the left ventricle, and for about an inch further on, that the substance was thinner, more flabby tlian usual, and of a more livid colour. Within the cavity, and near the apex, it was filled up with a substance for a con- siderable way. Tlie surface of this, next to the cavity of the ventricle and circulating blood, was firm, like coagulated blood of long standing, in the centre of wliich was half coagulated blood. In many places between the fasciculi near the apex were a number of small bodies, as it were peeping through between them, which were of the same substance v/ith the former. Something of the same ivind we found in the rigiit ventricle, which sliowed tlie nature of the disease better than the left. It would almost seem to be a circumscribed portion of blood entangled in the fasciculi of the ventricle: the outsides of it coagulating whilst the centre kept almost fluid, which formed a kind of cavity. The external surfaces of all of them were smooth and white, as if washed clean of the red blood, by the motion of the circulating blood. Perhaps after tliey were once formed, tliey accumulated by attaching the coagulable part of the blood as it was passing in and out of tlie heart. But how the blood could stagnate at the first is not easily explained : or was it an exudation of the coagulable lymph, as we find in other cavities, and even in the veins, where the blood is also in motion ? The abdominal viscera appeared to be tolerably sound.—Hunteriaii Manuscript; Account of the Dissections of Morbid Bodies, p. 256. Parts of both the preceding cases are published by Mr. Thurnam in a paper On Aneurisms of the Heart; in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. xxi., pp. 213, 215: and a part of No. 333 is represented in the same volume, pi. iii., fig. 2. [In addition to the two preceding cases, the following are inserted, both because they perhaps belong to the preparations No. 328—329, and because they explain Mr. Hunter's opinions, hitherto unpublished, on the nature and distinction of clots (or polypi, as they have been called) formed in the heart before and after death.]