Two cases of calcareous infiltration of the muscular fibre of the heart / by Joseph Coats.

  • Joseph Coats
Date:
[1872]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two cases of calcareous infiltration of the muscular fibre of the heart / by Joseph Coats. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Forster* also refers to these two cases in treating of diseases of muscle* * On turning to the former of these papers, as abstracted in Canstatt’s Jahresbericht, I find a condition of the muscles of the lower extremity described, which seems in every respect similar to that of the muscular fibres of the heart in the second of the cases given above. The case was one of gangrene of the foot, for which, after a continued period of suppuration, the leg was amputated at the knee. Several muscles of the leg were found to be yellowish white in colour, but fibrous in appearance. It is stated also, that they splintered longitudinally like asbestos, and it is to be remarked, that the altered structure in the heart under consideration also presented a remarkable resemblance to asbestos. On microscopic examination, the affected muscles were found to be formed of partly homogeneous and partly granular cylinders. On adding hydrochloric acid, there was a development of gas, and the cylinders returned to the appearance of muscular fibre. The tendons were, to some extent, similarly impregnated. The essential charac¬ ters of the change which the muscular fibre had undergone in this, and in my second case, seem to be identical, and a certain amount of resemblance might be traced also in the circumstances under which the lesion occurred. The case observed by Kokitansky, seems to have been very similar also to the second case described in this paper. In a summary of his paper, contained in Schmidt’s Jahr- biicher, very little more is given concerning this case than appears in the passage quoted above from his “ Lehrbuch,” but it is particularly noted that the affection occurred in patches, was confined to the left ventricle, and the patches were mostly situated near the apex. The other particulars of the case are not mentioned. Turning now to the first case recorded above, I do not find, either in English or foreign medical literature, any de¬ scription of a similar lesion. The only case at all similar to it, of which I am aware, is one shown to me by Dr Koster, in * 1. c., p. 1016.
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