Researches on phthisis, anatomical, pathological and therapeutical.
- Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis
- Date:
- 1844
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Researches on phthisis, anatomical, pathological and therapeutical. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
49/616 page 9
![earlier period than the end of the third or commencement of the fourth month from the outset of the disease. At this period the walls of the cavities were, generally speaking, smooth, and lined with pseudo-membrane of slight consistence, and easily separable from the surface : in very rare cases the pulmonary tissue was exposed. When the disease was of longer standing, and the cavities older (which was ascertainable by accurate investigation of the symptoms and the comparative results of auscultation), their walls were almost invariably more or less hard and formed of tubercle, gray semi-transparent matter, or in some instances melanosis. These different mor- bid formations, either separated from each other by a little healthy pulmonary tissue or actually continuous, appeared variously combined. The membrane investing the cavity was dense, grayish-coloured, almost semi-transparent, semi-cartila- ginous, about a quarter of a line [half a millimeter] (a little more or a little less) thick, and generally itself lined with a second membrane; this latter rarely formed a continuous tract, and was extremely soft, and of yellowish or whitish colour. In one fourth part of my cases neither of these membranes could be found, the pulmonary tissue, more or less completely altered in properties, being perfectly bare and uncovered. Whether large or small, and whether they were recently formed or had existed for a considerable time, the cavities communicated with the bronchi by a variable number of openings. The pseudo-membrane of the former and the mucous tunic of the latter were closely united at the orifices of the cavities; and when the walls of these had become red, the limits of each could only be ascertained by means of careful dissection. Cavities of old formation differed, further, from those of recent origin in their being uneven on the surface and an- fractuous, while they usually communicated with others of smaller dimensions. It was not uncommon to find the cavities crossed in various directions by bands, varying in length and thickness, iineven, from one to two lines [2 to 4 millimeters] broad, thinner in their middle part than at either extremity, and formed of gray matter studded with tubercles. Although vascular ramifications could rarely be detected in them, I observed these in five cases with or without the aid of injection. (Case liv.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21015235_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
