Volume 1

Text-book of the principles and practice of medicine / by the late Charles Hilton Fagge and Philip Henry Pye-Smith.

  • Charles Hilton Fagge
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Text-book of the principles and practice of medicine / by the late Charles Hilton Fagge and Philip Henry Pye-Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1117/1212 (page 1095)
    experimentally by von Jus, whose observations are recorded in the 'Arch, f. exp. Pathologic ' for 1876. He injected cinnabar into the air-passages of dogs, and found that the particles were rapidly taken up hy cells which he believed to be altered leucocytes, so that five days later scarcely any pigment was left in the pulmonary alveoli; within six hours after the commencement of the experiment some of it reached the bronchial glands, being first deposited in their cortical layer, but ultimately reaching their medullary structure; much, however, remained in the lungs, being accumulated in the connective tissue, between the lobules, round the vessels and the tubes, and beneath the pleura. In other words, von Jus found that its distribution corresponded precisely with what had been described by Virchow in the case of the miner's lung. The phthisis associated with anthracosis is attended with one special symptom, which may be conveniently mentioned here. This is the black spit %vhich is often ejected in considerable quantities and for a long time, even by miners who have entirely ceased to follow their occupation. There is no doubt whatever that it is often due to the gradual disintegration of the blackened and infiltrated parts of the lungs, or comes from vomica; such as are sometimes found after death, full of a black liquid. Thus, Dr Greenhow showed to the Pathological Society in 1869 the lungs of a collier who about ten daj^s before his death suddenly spat up matter closely resembling black paint, and continued to expectorate four or frve ounces daily until he died ; in the right lung there was a large irregular cavity, containing a quantity of black pulpy residue. Nevertheless sputa may be very black without there being any lesion of the pulmonary tissue beyond the anthracosis ; ha?.moptj^sis or the detection of elastic tissue or of bacilli in the sputum is needful to prove that ulceration is going on. (2) Oxide of iron,.—In 1864, in discussing the subject of anthracosis, Friedreich asked the question why., if the black lungs and bronchial glands of coal-miners were due to inhaled carbon, the workers in red sandstone quarries should not have the corresponding organs reddened by the dust to which they were exposed. Now, it happened that Zenker had at that very time in his possession the lungs of a woman who had, for seven years before her death, been engaged in making the little paper books in which gold-leaf is laid. The paper has to be coloured red with peroxide of iron, and this is rubbed in with a piece of felt. The occupation is a very dusty one ; and the woman's lungs were found after death to be throughout of a bright brick-red colour, so that their cut surface looked just as if it had been daubed over with red paint. The microscope showed that granules of oxide of iron were present, beneath the pleura, in the interlobular fibroid septa, in the peribronchial sheaths, in the walls of the alveoli, and even in cells occupying their interior. In the twentieth volume of the ' Pathological Transactions' there is a coloured drawing of a section of this lung, taken from a specimen in the possession of Dr AVilson Fox; the t4nt is much browner than in Zenker's drawings published in the 'Deutsches 7\.rchiv ' two years before. Zenker proposed to name the affection Siderosis {(T'iS}]poc = iron). In 1874, Merkel, in ' Ziemssen's Handbuch,' was able to refer to seven other cases,-one of which follov^ed the use of red oxide of iron for polishing glass. He had also met with two instances in which the lungs were blackened by the black oxide of iron, and one in Avhich ferric phosphate was present. There was no difficulty in detecting the iron in the sputa by hydrochloric acid and ferrocyanide of potassium.