Pathological and clinical observations respecting morbid conditions of the stomach / by C. Handfield Jones.

  • Jones, C. Handfield (Charles Handfield), 1819-1890.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathological and clinical observations respecting morbid conditions of the stomach / by C. Handfield Jones. 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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    At length, tlie interest wliicli the subject at first excited died away; few observations on this remarkable change were pnbhshed; and when softening of the sto- mach was met with, it was regarded by most physicians, as it had been before the time of Hunter, as the result of disease. In France, indeed, where morbid anatomy was most assiduously cultivated, but where the writings of Hunter were less generally read than in this country, many of the most enlightened pathologists seemed never to have even suspected that it could have any other origin; so that, in 1830, when Dr. Carswell again mooted the subject in Paris and exhibited softened stomachs of rabbits that were killed soon after feeding and opened some hours after death, almost as much interest—I may say, indeed, surprise—seems to have been excited, as was caused by the first publication of the observations of Hunter. From this time the renewed interest had its former efiect, and, for a few years, essays on the subject fre- quently appeared. Observations, indeed, of softening of the Stomach, or of digestion of the stomach after death, have occasionally been published up to tliis time; some very admirable ones recently, by Mr. Wilkinson King, in one of the late numbers of Guy's Hospital Eeports. But pathologists, in general, seem not to be aware how frequently the stomach undergoes this change. It has been supposed by many to occur only after violent deaths; and when occurring, as it often does, in other circumstances, it has been either overlooked or has been re^rarded as the effect of disease. M. Louis, for instance, one of the most accurate ob- servers of our time, has published a special essay on softening (with thinness) of the mucous membrane of