Researches on phthisis: anatomical, pathological and therapeutical / by P. C. A. Louis.

  • Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis
Date:
1844
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches on phthisis: anatomical, pathological and therapeutical / by P. C. A. Louis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    entertained as to its nature. Intense redness^ in truth, associated witli softening, and sometimes thickening, cannot be otherwise than the result of inflammation; and the general absence of special symptoms appear to me simply to show that the inflam- mation sets in during the closing days of life, in the same manner as I found to be very frequently the fact in the case of the lungs and pleura. There can be no doubt (and I shall have occasion to recur more than once to the proposition) that debility on the part of the individual does not prevent the ma- jority of diseases from exhibiting the greater number of their peculiar symptoms, but it certainly alters, in some instances, the character, and diminishes the number, of those symptoms. Thus, pneumonia, supervening as one of the ultimate phenomena of phthisis, rarely gives rise to tlie expectoration of viscid, yellowish, or rusty and semi-transparent sputa; and in many cases the disease remains perfectly latent. The same might be said of pleurisy. Now what occurs in the case of inflammation of the pulmonary parenchyma and of the pleura may, and must, take place in the instance of the mucous membrane of the sto- mach,—an additional motive for regarding the morbid state be- fore us as an inflammation originating towards the close of Hfe. No pathologist, it is to be presumed, will be disposed to view the redness and softening, we have been speaking of, as a simple cadaveric plienomenon; for stasis of blood does not produce soft- ening of the tissues, and it is impossible to ascribe one and the same anatomical change to two such completely different causes. § 5. Mammillation with grayish or reddish Discoloration oftheMucom Membrane of the Stomach. In this state, which I have observed eighteen times inde- pendently of the preceding lesions, the mucous membrane, in- stead of exhibiting the uniform and velvet-like surface natural to it, presented, over a surface of variable extent, certain promi- nences of various forms and dimensions, generally speaking rounded, of from one to two lines [2 to 4 milllimeters] in diameter, resembling granulations in appearance, and separated from each other by deep furrows of variable length, and one line [2 millimeters] or a little less, broad. The membrane was almost always of grayish colour, pretty frequently shaded with