Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of human pathology / by Herbert Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
615/636
![that the tumour should be removed, was present during the operation, which he performed with great dexterity and bold- ness. A large portion of skin was removed, and the im- mense and thickened cyst was dissected from the front of the chest. The part removed weighed four pounds and a half. The cyst was about a quarter of an inch in thickness : from two or three parts of its internal aspect masses of fun- gus haematodes projected into the cavity. The patient re- covered without any untoward symptoms, and is now alive and well, Feb. 1836. Some obscure threatenings of a re- turn of the complaint have been recently observed by Dr. Chalmers, who thus speaks of them in a letter to me. “ I saw Mrs. this afternoon. She had enjoyed an almost uninterrupted good state of health ever since the ope- ration in March 1832. She has quite recovered the use of the arm, notwithstanding the destruction of the tendon and the removal of nearly the whole of the pectoralis major. She can cross her breast with the arm; but, in raising her hand to touch the left shoulder or ear, she needs the elbow to be raised by the left hand. For two or three months past she has experienced an unpleasant tingling sensation stretch- ing down the inside of the arm, commencing at the insertion of the heads of the tendon of the pectoralis ; and though the cicatrix is quite healthy, and slides over the ribs without uneasiness, and there is not the slightest vestige of irregu- larity or tumefaction, yet I discovered in the margin of the axilla (apparently the extracted termination of the tendon) a hard tumour of irregular shape, not very moveable, but without pain even when handled roughly. Time will show what the nature or termination of this may prove: it has been there, she says, ever since the operation ; and perhaps, after all, it may only be a bundle of consolidated fibres of the muscle.” [y. 40.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21958518_0615.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
