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
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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![Now, as we see a great difference between these two polypi, one, we are certain, arises from want of action, and is like all otlier that are formed gradually, and from the want of action ; while the other is like the settling of common blood after death ; in every respect, is much more in quantity than we can expect, and takes on tlie forms of parts, as all blood quite at rest would. From these circumstances, I should think one was formed before death, the other after, or, at soonest, at the time of death ; and as we see that blood, being left to rest, and only allowed to cool gradually, takes on more and more of the buff colour and consistence in proportion to these two circumstances; and this must be the case with the blood in a dead person: but why tlie blood should take on this appearance in the right ventricle more than the left, I do not pretend to say.— Hu7iterian Manuscript; Account of the Dissections of Morbid Bodies, p. 33. I opened a man at St. George's Hospital. He was supposed to be consumptive, but was a little dropsical. His lungs were more solid than what is usual for thatviscus in a sound state, but no partial disease or hardness, nor adhesions of any conse- quence. There was a good deal of liquor pericardii mixed with coagulable lymph. His heart was very large and white in its coats, somewhat like the flesh of veal. In the apex of the left ventricle there was a substance about the bigness of a pigeon's egg, but more flat. Its detached surface was smooth, but a little uneven, like the external sur- face of the brain, was of a whitish cast, streaked with brown or red, and pulpy to the feel. When cut into, it proved to be softer in its middle than external surface, so that the external surface had formed a kind of coat. Its substance seemed to be half dis- solved into a wiiitish brown fluid, of the consistence of cream. Cutting this was some- thing like cutting into tlie udder of a cow that was giving milk, [in wliich] tlie milk is seen mixed a little with blood on the cut surface. I found that this substance was entirely separable from the substance of the heart, and only connected to it by being entangled in the fasciculi of tliat part. The parts of it tliat passed in between the fasciculi were firmer than what the body of the tumour was, and had the appearance of aneurismal blood. Tiiis substance, I do suppose, was originally blood ; but wlietlier formed from that blood which was within the cavity of the ventricle to be thrown out by the aorta ; or whether an exudation of coagulable lymph from the substance of the heart at this part, is not easy to determine. If the first, this part of the heart must have been paralytic; but wiiicli ever way it was, it was not now sound blood ; and its disease was that of blood. If I remember right, this substance had the same appearance with that substance found in the back of a young man described in a paper given in by Dr. Knox in the London Essays. I asked some of the pupils who had attended liim before death, if he had had an irregular pulse for some time, and was answered in the affirmative. This was one of the peripneumonics. Was not tlie dropsy owing to the disease in the lungs, and more especially to this kind ?—Hunterian Manuscript; Account of the Dissections of Morbid Bodies, p. 221. 334. Parts of a right femoral artery and vein from a patient in whom the right](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24758139_0002_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
