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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    eighteen and nineteen years of age, the internal substance of the organs contained a pretty considerable number of small cysts, varying in diameter from one to three lines [2 to 6 mil- limeters], of such slight consistence that they could not be sepa- rated from the surrounding pai'ts, to which they adhered by no means closely, unless by using much precaution. They were about half a line [1 millimeter] thick, and qpntained a greenish, pulpy matter. I have met with this kind of cyst in no other organ than the liver, and in none but phthisical subjects. In another individual (a woman aged twenty-nine years) the middle lobe was destroyed, and its place occupied by a fibrous cyst, of irregularly rounded form, and about double as large as the lobe itself,—its involucrum was only half a line [1 milli- meter] thick,— in some parts even much less than this. The cyst, of yellowish white colour, contained a colourless fluid, sHghtly turbid and of moderate density, in the midst of which floated about a hundred small bodies,—free, of soft consistence and rounded form, varying in size from that of a hemp-seed to that of a small cherry. These httle bodies (hydatids) were formed of a thin membrane containing a transparent fluid, and the cyst itself was lined through its entire extent by a white opaque membrane, of the same amount of firmness as boiled white of egg, varying in thickness from half to three quarters of a line [1 to 1^ millimeters] very slightly adherent to the surrounding parts, and indeed rather placed in simple juxta- position with these than otherwise, smooth and polished like a serous membrane on its adherent surface, dull-looking on its internal surface. The latter presented five elongated processes, varying from three inches and seven lines to nearly five inches [9 to 12 centimeters], and from one to two lines [2 to 4 milli- meters] in thickness, uneven, and taberculated on the surface, and exhibiting the appearance of concrete albumen on the sur- face of a, cracked egg. The parenchyma, upon which the cyst lay, presented no alteration of structure of any kind. The consistence of the liver varied much; either softer or firmer than in the natural state, it occasionally united to a cer- tain degree of hardness a remarkable friability: in no case had symptoms existed referrible to this mode of alteration. One of the subjects, whose case is elsewhere related, (Case VII,) suppHcd an example (the only one I had at that time seen)