Collection of facts illustrative of the morbid conditions of the pulmonary artery / by Norman Chevers, M.D.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Collection of facts illustrative of the morbid conditions of the pulmonary artery / by Norman Chevers, M.D. 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.

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    ON THE MOEBID CONDITIONS OFTHK * PULMONAEY ARTERY, dbc. doc. Many remarkable and important cases of various forms of disease affecting the struc- tures of the pulmonary artery may be found scattered through the pages of our medical literature; and, recently, there have ap- peared several valuable memoirs illustrative of particular organic lesions which the tissues of that vessel are liable to undergo. Among these the essays by Mr. Paget in the Medico Chirurgical Transactions, and the papers of Dr. Craigie and Dr. Ormerod in the Edin- burgh Medical and Surgical Journal, de- serve especial mention. Still I am not acquainted with any work in which the stu- dent can meet with a general and compre- hensive history of the principal diseases that are known to affect this artery, or to which the morbid anatomist who happens to ob- serve remarkable deviations from the natural condition of the vessel can at once refer with the probability of being able to compare his cases with similar recorded instances. The pulmonary artery appears to be con- structed in a manner which renders it far less liable than are the systemic arteries to undergo extensive and conspicuous organic changes: and the manner in which post- mortem examinations of the thoracic viscera are usually conducted—that of removing the heart and lungs separately from the body, and of making vertical incisions through the pulmonary structures—appears to have al- ways led to a want of caution in examining the entire tract of a vessel thus mutilated and divided. From this it has resulted that the diseased conditions of this artery have remained, upon the whole, matters of ne- glected inquiry: morbid anatomists have very rarely been at the trouble of systema- tically examining its whole extent in cases of pulmonary and cardiac disease, and hence indolence, rather than demonstration, has led to the establishment of a general but most erroneous belief that the lesions to which this vascular tract is prone are less frequent and less important than those which are continually observed in the structures of the systemic arteries. A practical investigation of the diseases of the vascular system, pursued in a large pub- lic institution during a period of more than ten years, has enabled me to collect a consi- derable number of original and, I venture to think, important memoranda of the abnor- mal conditions to which this artery is liable. Some remarkable instances of rare lesions of this vessel have also occurred in the practice of my friends, who have obliged me with a sight of the diseased structures, and have furnished me with narratives of the cases. In the following pages I have endeavoured to combine my own facts with those which have occurred in the experience of others, in such a manner as to present, in a condensed form, the outline of a history of the princi- pal diseases of the pulmonary artery. Interesting as I venture to believe the ob- servations thus collected vdll prove to the scientific investigator, I should still not have felt willing to undertake the task of eliciting and recording them, did I not hope to deduce from their correlation results of greater im- portance than those which usually accrue from the discussion of any merely anatomi- cal question; and if it did not appear that such an inquiry would, in no small degree, tend to advance that great purpose which naust ever be the final object of all patholo- gical research—the treatment and mitigation of disease. In the following pages I shall lose no opportunity of applying the facts ad- duced to the illustration of certain definite and leading principles which I believe it to be most necessary to establish for the proper therapeutic management of diseases of the heart and lungs. Before entering upon the main subjects of the present inquiry, it will be necessary to devote a few observations to some leading points in the