Volume 1

Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  • James Paget
Date:
1882-1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    34/228 (page 14)
    from particular stimuli, is evident in the female parts of genera- tion just before the birth of the foetus : they become relaxed prior to any pressure. The old women in the country can teU when a hen is going to lay, from the parts becoming loose about the anus. —Hunter, On the Blood dfc.: Worlcs, vol. iii, p. 477. 32. Sections of a humerus in which, by atrophy, the walls have become very thin, light, dry and finely porous. The inner surface of the wall has reticular raised raarkinsfs, but, except at and near the articular ends, there is no appearance of cancelli. From the Museum of John Uowship, Esq. Purchased, 1841. 33. A part of the integuments of an abdomen atrophied or, as Mr. Hunter described the change, thinned by interstitial absorption,'^ in consequence of the pressure of an encysted tumour, which grew beneath them and over the origin of the right rectus abdominis muscle. The patient, a man who was in St. G-eorge's Hospital, died in consequence of the tumour being opened. This and some of the specimens of Ulcers were preserved by Mr. Hunter as illustra- tions of his doctrine of absorption expressed in the following extracts from his writings :— As these [absorbent] vessels are productive of a vast variety of effects in the animal economy, which are very dissimilar in the intention and effect, they may be viewed in a variety of lights, and admit of a variety of divisions. I shall consider them in two views: first, as they absorb matter which is not any part of the machine ; secondly, as they absorb the machine itself. The first of these is the well-known use, the absorption of matter which is no part of the machine. In the second of these views we are to consider them as re- moving parts of the body itself, in which they may be viewed in two lights. The first is, where only a wasting is produced in the whole machine or part, such as in the wasting of the whole body from an atrophy ; or of a part, as in the wasting of the muscles of the leg, (fee. from some injury done to some nerve, tendinous part, or joint, all of which I call interstitial absorption, because it is removing parts of the body out of the interstices of that part which remains, leaving the part still as a perfect whole*. [See Nos. 21, 22.] But this mode is often carried further than simply wasting of the part; it is often continued till not a vestige is left, such as the total decay of a testicle; so that the interstitial absorp- tion might be understood in two senses. The second is, where they are removing whole parts of the • This mode of absorption has always been allowed or supposed, whether performed by the lymphatic veins or lymphatics.