Foreign bodies in the air-passages : the substance of two clinical lectures delivered in the Western Infirmary, Glasgow / by Hector C. Cameron.

Cameron, Hector Clare, 1843-1928.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899]

Credit: Foreign bodies in the air-passages : the substance of two clinical lectures delivered in the Western Infirmary, Glasgow / by Hector C. Cameron. 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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$decomposing pus, and not the sickening odor cliaracteristic of ordinary pulmonary gangrene.^’ No improvement occurred in the child’s con- dition ; he continued to go from had to worse, and died on the 1st of November. A post-mortem examination was made forty-eight hours after death, and the following sentences are from Dr. Napier’s report of it: “ The left lung and the heart were normal. The right lung was solidified throughout. The upper lobe was perfectly non-adherent and smooth, and in it the hepatization was red and apparently recent; it contained no abscesses. The lower lobes were adherent; the adhesions to the diaphragm were particularly firm. These lower lobes had a dirty grayish-green appearance and a very fetid odor. On making a deep vertical incision into the lower lobes from the front, numerous abscesses, some as large as a walnut, and all having fetid contents, were opened. On removing the lung and slitting up the bronchus, a foreign body Avas found firmly lodged beyond its first subdivision, blocking up the bronchus communicating with the two lower lobes. The foreign body Avas embedded in a deep groove in the side of the bronchus, and the mucous membrane round this groove Avas deeply injected. The air- passages beloAV this point Avere full of stinking pus.” The foreign body proved to be the pith of some plant, probably the elder-bush, Avhich grcAV in abundance near the boy’s residence. ' “ It aa^s seven- sixteenths of an inch in extreme length, fi\'^e-sixteenths of an inch in diametei, and Aveighed four grains, being light, therefore, considering its size.” A still moie remarkable and instructive case is one Avhicli Avas under the care of my colleague Professor Gairdner, in this hospital, a fcAV years ago, Avhich I had the opportunity of seeing. The boy Avas eleven years of age, but the first symptoms of his chest ailment shoAved themselves Avhen he Avas tAvo and a half years old. There Avas no hi.story of any fit of clioking Avith a foreign body. I Avill 'quote the mam facts of the case from a short account of it given in the Glasgow Medical Journal (January, 1886, p. 40). “This cascAvas of great importance not only as illustrating an un- usual form of disease in tlie limg.s, but as involving tlie unsuccessful peifoimancc of an operation only recently recommended in the case of ba.sal cavities,—viz., tbc attemjit at opening and drainage from Avithout. In connection Avith this, the folloAving I)rief summary, Avhicli Avas drawn u]) in INIarcli, 1885, by Dr. Gairdner, with a View of being sidimittel to Dr. Douglas PoAvell, may be adopted as the basis of the abbreviated rcjiort, tlie jiatient having at tlie time been under medical$