A contribution to the history of leucemia (intestinal leucemia) / by Professor Béhier.

  • Béhier (Professor)
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A contribution to the history of leucemia (intestinal leucemia) / by Professor Béhier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/21 (page 14)
    this disease; a result which fully confirms the views main- tained by Professor Virchow with respect to the iiature of Peyer's patches and the solitary glands; both forming part, in his opinion, of the same general system as the spleen and lymphatic ganglia. It may also be interesting to compare these chronic lesions of the patches, and solitary glands, giving rise to permanent Leucemia, with the acute disease which seizes upon the same organs in typhoid fever, and coincides with a momentary increase of the white blood-cells. Several writers, and particularly Professor Virchow, attribute this transient state of the blood to the exaggerated activity of Peyer's patches and the solitary glands, which, in typhoid fever^ become ulcerated, after swelling to a considerable size. This doctrine has been clearly expounded in the remarkable -Work of my excellent frieti.d D' Murchison, On the continued fevers of Gfeat Britain (p. S57j. The case which I have placed on record brings additional strength to this opinion. In fact, if there only exists a transient and momentary Leucemia in typhoid fever, it must be borne in mind, that the hypertrophy of Peyer's patches, with which this multiplication of the white globules seems to be connected, is also of a transitory nature, and is speedily succeeded by ulceration, which entirely suppresses their functional activity, or by resolution, which brings it back to the normal state. On the contrary, in the present case, the morbid change is permanent, and assumes a chronic form; there is no tendency to ulceration or resolution, so that the excessive multiplication of the white blood-cells is permanent, as well as the hypertrophy of the lymphatic tissue; and thus