Clinical lecture on myxoedema / by William Ord.

  • Ord, William M. (William Miller), 1834-1902.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lecture on myxoedema / by William Ord. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the British Medical Journal, May n///, 1878.] CLINICAL LECTU ON MYXCEDEMA. By WILLIAM O R D, M.D., F.R.C. P., Thysician to and Lecturer on Medicine at St. Thomas’s Hospital Gentlemen,—By the kindness of two of my colleagues, Dr. Harley and Dr. Greenfield, I am able to show you two excellent specimens of the condition which I have ventured to call myxoedema. The two cases were severally recognised in the out-patient department by my colleagues, and were sent to Alice Ward for observation. Your attention may first be directed to the general appearance. Both patients are adult women; both have swollen features and hands ; in both the skin over the whole body is swollen and singularly dry and harsh to the touch, having very much the condition produced by washing in strong alkaline solutions. On the face the skin is semi- transparent, the eyelids and lips showing this particularly well. But neither on the face nor on the limbs does the skin pit on pressure. The hanging folds of the eyelids do not even yield to a firm pinch. In both women you will notice an even and persistent blush on the cheek, terminating by a sharp border at the lower border of the orbit, and standing in singular contrast with the bloodless eyelids which sur- round the eyes with two white circular arete. The hands in both are much swollen. But, on comparing the cases, you will see that, in one, having a yellowish tint of skin, and who is much weaker than the other, the hands are much more swollen, the fingers shapeless, and the skin like dry leather. This patient, I may observe, shows the appear- ances described by Sir William Gull, in his account of a “ cretinoid condition supervening in women in adult life”; and you will agree that the term “spade-like”, used by Sir William Gull, is well applied to the hands before you.