On the pathology and treatment of dysentery : being the Gulstonian lectures delivered at the College of Physicians, in February 1847 / by William Baly.
- Date:
- [1847]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the pathology and treatment of dysentery : being the Gulstonian lectures delivered at the College of Physicians, in February 1847 / by William Baly. 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.
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![ON THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF DYSENTERY, ]3 produced in the mucous membrane by a similar process—I allude to cases in ■which the mucous membrane has been lost without there being any marks of active inflamma- tion in the subjacent and surrounding mem- brane—cases where the membrane is by some writers said to be destroyed by soften- ing. This, however, must occur very rarely in dysentery,—at all events, in the dysen- tery of adults. In this disease, when acute, the ulcers are certainly produced by the jjrocess before described, smaller or larger portions of the mucous memhrane perishing, and being thrown off as solid sloughs. This process is, however, not peculiar to dysentery : it is seen conspicuously in con- tinued fever when the affection of the glands of the small intestines exists in a very active form; and probably also in all mucous membranes in which loss of substance is rapidly produced as a consequence of acute inflammation. I should not have said so much on this topic, did not the language of modern morbid anatomists seem to indicate that they regard true ulceration as the most usual cause of the solutions of continuity so often seen in the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal. The earlier observers were in the habit of regarding all dark and much con- gested portions of mucous membrane as mortified. Modern anatomists avoid this error ; but in the instance to which I have to-day called your attention, they appear to have overlooked the occurrence of morti- fication or sphacelus where it really occurs.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21955578_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
