The pathology and treatment of syphilis, chancroid ulcers, and their complications / by John K. Barton.

  • Barton, John K. (John Kellock), 1829-1894.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology and treatment of syphilis, chancroid ulcers, and their complications / by John K. Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bone, apparently the result of a process of ulceration. These were accompanied by other distinctly syphilitic symptoms. The activity of nutrition required by the growing bone, makes it pro- bable that the hereditary poison would produce a diseased action in the epiphysis. The frequent occurrence of syphilitic visceral lesions in here- dito-sj'philitic infants is now fully recognised, and is admitted to be a very fi-equent cause of death in such ; numerous post-mortem examinations have proved this fact, but have at the same time shown that death is not always thus produced, for not unfre- quently no visceral lesion sufficient to produce death has been found. Peritonitis.—Sir James Y. Simpson was the first to connect peritonitis in the infant with hereditary syphilis. This celebrated author relates thirty-six cases obsei*ved by himself, in which this disease existed with what appeared to him sufficient proof of its syphilitic origin. His conclusions are corroborated by Wilks, who in thi-ee cases of hereditary syphilis found adhesions between the liver and the diaphragm, and twice found general peritonitis. Hereditary syphilitic peritonitis is of a chronic adhesive character, without any tendency to suppuration, and presenting no very active pain, nor great constitutional disturbance. Hepatic disease.—The liver is found to be diseased more fre- quently than any other organ in hereditary syphilis. Nor is this surprising, when we consider the important functions which this gland performs in the foetus, and the susceptibility which it shows to syiDhilitic disease in the adult. Two kinds of disease occur in the liver ; the one diffused, the other circumscribed. The first, or diffused variety, which is much the most common in hereditary disease, has been originally and specially described by Gubler. A fii-m fibro-plastic material is deposited throughout the gland, press- ing upon the gland-cells, and blocking up the vessels ; this deposit may occupy one lobe only, or the whole organ may be sometimes affected. Gubler has seen it confined to the left lobe, to the thin edge of the right lobe, and to the lobulus Spigelii. The induration