On the pathology of fatty degeneration / by Edward Latham Ormerod.

  • Ormerod, Edward Latham.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology of fatty degeneration / by Edward Latham Ormerod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    13/44 page 11
    of the original records of these observations, I quote from Lehraann,* and from a summary by Mr. Simon.f I am quite sure that everyone conversant with the difficulties of experi- ments on living animals, and sharing my dislike to witnessing them, will excuse my not having repeated them. The experiments may be divided into three classes :— 1. Portions of animal substances containing little or no fat, as for instance of the crystalline lens, of coagulated albumen, and such like, were inserted into the peritonasal cavities of living animals. After periods of from four to eight weeks they were removed and examined, when they were found much reduced in size and altered in chemical composition, contain- ing very little protein-substance, but a large quantity of fatty matter (Wagner, Michaelis). 2. Porous substances, such as cancellous bone or elder-pith, inserted in the same way, were found, after a certain time, to contain much fatty matter in their pores, and the coagulable lymph Avith which they had become invested was also rich in fatty matter (Burdach). 3. The same class of substances as were used bare in the first series of experiments, when covered with collodion, or enclosed in glass bottles, underwent no fatty transformation (Burdach). These experiments seem to me to prove that if the extraneous substance be protected from contact with the fluids of the living body, no fat is deposited in its interior. But wherever this contact is permitted, fatty deposition takes place, and this whatever the nature of the extraneous body. The substance, animal or vegetable, sponge, elder-pith, pumice-stone, or mus- cular fibre, is infiltrated -with fatty matter simply according to its permeability to the fluids of the living body which contain the fatty matter. And there is no more reason to suppose the fatty matty to have been derived from one than from another class of extraneous substances, from the muscular fibre than from the elder-pith. In all of them alike it is merely an in- filtration and deposition, deeper and more abundant according to their porosity, and to the facility with which the living fluids bringing fatty matter from the blood can enter them. The process of fatty degeneration, if I am correct in these inferences, is not adipocerous transformation, nor does it ensue in dead animal substances—dead as we commonly understand the word. What it is may be more positively stated, after wo * ' Physiologische Chcmie,' 2te Auflage, S. 345. t ]Iolraos's 'System of Surgery,' vol. i. p. 11, article Inflammation.
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