Case of mollities and fragilitas ossium, accompanied with urine strongly charged with animal matter / by William MacIntyre.

  • MacIntyr, William.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of mollities and fragilitas ossium, accompanied with urine strongly charged with animal matter / by William MacIntyre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ad lately lost strength and wasted rapidly, although his appetite continued keen, and he was consuming a much greater amount of solid animal food than he ever had been in the habit of taking when in perfect health. The discovery of albuminous matter in the urine naturally suggested the existence of Bright’s disease; but that suppo¬ sition was abandoned, on a closer consideration of the character oi the symptoms and the peculiar condition of the renal ex¬ cretion. The leading symptoms were not such as usually accompany that affection. Atrocious pains, like those which assailed our patient, constitute no part of Bright’s disease, while two of its most constant attendants, dropsy and cere¬ bral disturbance, were absent. The presence in the urine of an animal principle alien to it in a norma] state, might, it was at one time supposed, be attributable to erroneous vital chemistry, involving a perversion of the primary or secondary assimilating processes. This explanation was however, deemed far from adequate; for, admitting the pro¬ bability of these functions being in fault, the question as to what particular organ was affected, and what the special lesion that could give rise to a pathological condition so very anomalous, remained unanswered, and the case closed amid the uncertainty and doubt which had surrounded it from the beginning. But the information denied to the most anxious inquiries, prompted, alike, by the obscurity of the complaint and sympathy with the sufferer was yielded to the first touch of the anatomist's knife. The crumbling ribs proclaimed the presence of a disease of the osseous system, not more remark¬ able for its phenomena than terrible in its effects. Mollities and fragilitas ossium is, fortunately, not a common disease, but almost all the records of it which we possess agree in representing it as one scarcely paralleled for the amount of pam and misery which it inflicts. There was, therefore, little hesitation felt, even on the threshold of the post-mortem investigation, in connecting this early announcement with the antecedent history of the case, as well as its most unac-
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