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.
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![I have instituted this comparison between subjects of the same age, because the dimensions of the aorta differ greatly at different periods of life. Thus from the fortieth to the fiftieth year, it measures from about two inches five lines and a half to two inches and ten lines [68 to 70 millimeters] in width, on the level of the free border of the sygmoid valves, in persons dying of acute diseases; about two inches and seven lines [64 millimeters] in phthisical subjects; and only about two inches and five lines [60 millimeters] in individuals of the same age dying of cancer. These differences subsist through the entire tract of the artery, in proportion to its caliber. The measiu'e- ment in cancerous subjects deserves to be particularly noticed, from its corroborating what has been already said respecting the smallness of the heart in such persons. The lesions of the aorta just enumerated were also disco- vered in subjects dying of other chronic affections, but not in the same proportions; redness existed in the eighth part of the cases, organic changes in one half of them. This difference might lead us to suppose the various conditions of the aorta dependent in some manner upon the nature of the affection which had proved fatal, but it is perfectly expbcable by the age of the two series of subjects. In truth, whether observed after phthisis or some other chronic disease, it was always in subjects of from twenty to thirty-five years of age that redness of the aorta existed; now the majority of phthisical persons die in youth, whereas it is generally at a more advanced age that death occurs from other chronic diseases. The frequency of organic lesions of the aorta, compared with the extreme rarity of those of the heart,1 lends support to the position previously laid down :—namely, that the tendency to alterations of structure of this class is not always proportional to the activity of function of the parts they implicate,—the functions performed by the aorta being, so to speak, merely mechanical. In the cases where the lining membrane of the aorta was red, it was not thickened; in some instances only, in certain ' Of three hundred and fifty subjects dying of all kinds of disease indiscriminately, two only presented organic lesions of the heart;—in both instances the lesion con- sisted of partial transformation of its tissue into cancerous matter.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21015235_0094.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
