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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    of the organ, appeared a mass of yellowish tissue, of dull aspect, deficient in determinate structure, very firm, very difficult to tear, not unlike chamois-leather in look, of the form of a segment of a sphere, about five inches and a half [14 centimeters] in diameter, thin in the circumference, and somewhat less than an inch and two lines [3 centimeters] thick at the centre. The other species of adventitious product I met with but in one case : it consisted of rounded, yellowish, shining, elastic, moist-feeling granulations, very different from tuberculous matter, and scat- tered irregularly through the spleen, which was itself softened and enlarged. The dimensions of the viscus varied extremely: they were much less than natural in fifteen subjects ; much greater, double, treble, quadruple, and even more so, in sixteen others. I found that there appeared to be no connexion between this enlarge- ment of the spleen and the continued or intermittent fevers, under which the patients had laboured at a more or less distant period from the fatal event. The spleen was very small in the majority of subjects, who had had paroxysmal, or continued fever of severe kinds ; twice only did I find it large under the former circumstances, and once under the latter. The consistence of the spleen was subject to no less variety than its size. It was much greater than natural in ten subjects; and in all the cases, except one, the organ was equally dense in every part of its substance. With this increase of consistence coexisted, in the greater number of individuals, enlargement of the organ, and occasionally also a remarkable degree of friability. Softening, as marked as in typhoid fever, or even more so, was observed in eight of the ninety subjects. In order to ascertain if any influence in the production of the various states of the spleen just indicated could be fairly ascribed to the existing phthisical disease, I have compared them with those found in the bodies of subjects cut off by all kinds of acute or chronic maladies, indiscriminately. In this class of indi- Adduals enlargement of the spleen existed with the same degree of frequency as in the tuberculous ; and diminution ofbulkAvas both carried to greater lengths and of more frequent occm'rence. Of one hundred and sixty subjects (excluding all those destroyed by typhoid fever,) fifty had spleens of small dimensions. In