Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  • James Paget
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    This blood, so extravasated, cither forms vessels in itself, or vessels shoot out from the original surface of contact into it, forming an elongation of themselves, as we have reason to suppose they do in granulations. I have reason, however, to believe that the coagulum has the power, under necessary circumstances, to form vessels in and of itself; for I have already observed that coagulation, although not organic, is still of a peculiar form, structure, or arrangement, so as to take on necessary action, which, I should suppose, is somewhat similar to muscular action. I think I have been able to inject what I suspected to be the beginning of a vascular formation in a coagulum, when it could not derive any vessels from the surrounding parts. By injecting the crural artery of a stump above the knee, where there was a small pyramidal coagulum, I have filled this coagulum with my injection as if it had been cellular ; but there was no regular structure of vessels. When I compare this appearance with that of many violent inflam- mations on surfaces where the red blood is extravasated, forming, as it were, specks of extravasation like stars, and which, when injected, produce the same appearance with what I have described in the injection of the coagulum ; when I compare this again with the progress of vascularity in the membranes of the chick, where one can perceive a zone of specks beyond the surface of regular vessels close to the chick, similar to the above extravasation, and which in a few hours become vascular, I conceive that these parts have a power of forming vessels within themselves, all of them acting upon the same principle. But where this coagulum can form an immediate union with the surrounding parts, it either receives vessels at this surface, or forms vessels first at this union, which communicate with those of the surrounding surface; and they either shoot deeper and deeper, or form vessels deeper and deeper, in the coagulum, till they all meet in its centre. If it is by the first mode, viz., the shooting of vessels from the surrounding surfaces into the coagulum, then it may be the ruptured vessels, in cases of accident, which shoot into the coagulum; and where a coagulum, or extravasation of coagulable lymph, is thrown in be- tween two [sound] surfaces only contiguous, there it may be the exhaling vessels of those surfaces which now become the vessels of the part. In whatever way they meet in the centre, they in- stantly embrace, unite, or inosculate. Now this is all perfectly and easily conceived among living parts, but not otherwise.—Hunter, On the Blood, ^c.: WorTcs, vol. iii. p. 118. A notice of this preparation wiU be found in a concise view of Mr. Hunter's then new opinions concerning the life of the blood, in Dr. Duncan's 'Medical Commentaries,' vol. ii. p. 198 (London, • 1774), under the head of Medical News. 669. Part of the jugular vein of an Ass, the cavity of wLich is in many places obliterated, and in the intervening spaces is filled with masses of pale coagula of blood, or lymph. All