A case of disease of the lymphatics of the abdominal integuments, with occasional discharge of large quantities of a chylous fluid / by William Roberts, M.D.

  • Roberts, William, Sir, 1830-1899.
Date:
[©1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of disease of the lymphatics of the abdominal integuments, with occasional discharge of large quantities of a chylous fluid / by William Roberts, 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.

    8/26 (page 2)
    a new and, I hope, more rational theory of that strange disease than any hitherto offered. W. Robinson, aged 45, was admitted into the Manchester Royal Infirmary, September 21st, 1868. He was born in Accrington, and never resided out of Lancashire. A clogger by trade, he worked occasionally in the mill, and enjoyed good health, with the exception of occasional indigestion, until two and a half years ago. His family history is good, and neither in that nor in the antecedents of his own life, could any circumstance be found bearing directly on the genesis of his present complaint. He is a widower and never had children. Two and a half years ago he began to suffer from a succession of large abscesses; one appeared on the buttock, another on the right breast, a third in the left groin, and a fourth in the right iliac region, two inches from the middle line, and about midway be- tween the horizontal level of the umbilicus and the pubes. The two last formed, opened, and refilled several times before they finally closed. These abscesses continued to trouble him for a period of six months, and brought him to a low state of health. He suffered from severe shooting pains which seemed to extend from one abscess to another; he lost his appetite and grew weak and thin, and had to go to Southport to recruit his health. After all the abscesses had healed up he noticed a scab to remain over the site of the one situated in the right iliac region, and one night, some twenty months before admission into hospital, he picked this off, and immediately a pale watery fluid, exactly like gum-water began to exude. This escaped so quickly that in a quarter of an hour his clothes were soaked; the discharge con- tinued during the night and the succeeding day, in gradually diminishing quantity, and then ceased. He calculated that from two to three pints of fluid escaped on this occasion. And now he noticed a number of pale transparent vesicles, no larger than pins' heads scattered in the right iliac region over and around the site of the old abscess. When he first observed them they were ten or a dozen in number, but in a few weeks they began to spread and multiply until, in a few months, they dotted the surface of the