Surgery : its theory and practice / by William Johnson Walsham.
- William Walsham
- Date:
- 1897
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Surgery : its theory and practice / by William Johnson Walsham. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
803/898 page 787
![Chronic abscess of the breast is occasionally met with as the result of chronic inflammation following a slight injury, continued pressure as by the corsets, &c. It occurs as a distinct, ill-defined slightly tender, hard, tense, or elastic, or perhaps distinctly fluctuat- ing swelling, but is unattended by redness, oedema, or fever The axillary glands may or may not be enlarged. Such an abscess has often been mistaken for a carcinoma. Free incision is the usual treatment. Chronic lobular inflammation of the breast (chronic mastitis), has been described by various names, as lobular indura- tion, chrome hypertrophy, chronic interstitial mastitis, &c. It generally affects one lobe, or limited portion of the gland, and is then hable to be mistaken for a tumour, or it may involve several lobules of the gland, giving it a peculiar shotty character, each nodule being separate from the other. It is said to be most fre- quent m married women beyond the child-bearing period of life ■ but my own experience is that it is as often met with in youn- and unmarried women. r s dUU Cause and Pathology.-It is generally attributed to ovarian dis- turbance, injury, pressure of the corsets, &o. A small-ceU-infil- tration occurs in the connective tissue of the affected lobe with ncreased proliferation of the epithelium in the acini. LaL the cells or fibroblasts form fibrous tissue, which contracts, prTsring upon and obliterating the ducts and acini, and causing decern tion of the epithelium lining them. Should son,, § ^e acini escape the pressure which has obliterated the ducts leadhTg from them, small cysts may be formed; but such cysts seldom aE a large size m consequence of the unyieldine nature of+ tissue by which they are surrounded fibr°US Symptoms -The patient usually complains of a swelling and sometimes of pam m the breast. On erasuin* tt»p hrlTw £e fingers the hypertrophied portion 2^! ^^ drawing it from the nipple so as to make the lactiferous duct is felt, nor the swelling is usually of a wedffe-shinp ] 1 u™ei, ^n7 Happens, the nip^TeLoK ^Zp.S S 3 e 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21514392_0803.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
