A study of the various changes which occur in the tissues in acute diphtheritic toxaemia : more especially in reference to 'acute cardiac failure' / by Leonard S. Dudgeon.
- Leonard Dudgeon
- Date:
- 1906
Licence: In copyright
Credit: A study of the various changes which occur in the tissues in acute diphtheritic toxaemia : more especially in reference to 'acute cardiac failure' / by Leonard S. Dudgeon. 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.
8/51 page 230
![He gives a typical example of each disease to illustrate the most important points. Thus in a child, aged 5, who died on the seventeenth day of disease from progressive cardiac failure, he found the following changes: The transverse striation of the heart muscle was lost in many places, while some of the fibres showed very marked longitudinal striation. Irregular fatty change occurred throughout the cardiac muscle ; some of the fat droplets were of very large size. The muscle nuclei showed abnormal staining reactions, and there was some increase of the cellular elements in the interstitial tissue. The pericardium was not inflamed. In a boy of 19 years of age, who died rapidly in a third attack of rheumatic fever, some acute pericarditis was found at the autopsy, together with acute endocarditis of the aortic valve and chronic mitral disease. Here extreme fatty change was observed throughout the cardiac muscle. Some interstitial inflammation was present, as was only to be expected. The heart muscle of the rabbit, which had died from “ staphylococcic pyaemia ” on the sixth day of illness, showed foci of inflammation throughout its substance, and definite patchy fatty changes. The heart muscle was also examined in a case of chorea, and early fatty change was noticed in some of the fibres. Villy [18] examined the stomach in fifteen cases of diphtheria, and found fatty degeneration of the gland cells to be a well-marked feature. In some examples the fatty change affected the whole of the glandular tissue, in other instances it appeared to be more patchy in character. The cases from which the affected stomachs were obtained had been fed during the last few days of life by nutrient enemata. Collections of leucocytes in the mucosa and submucosa, chiefly of the lymphocyte variety, were a constant feature. Fatty change in the heart muscle was also found to be present in his cases, so that this investigator arrived at the conclusion that the cause of the vomiting in diphtheria and the cardiac failure depended upon the microscopical changes found in the stomach wall and heart muscle.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22428483_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
