On fibrinous deposition in the heart / by Benjamin Ward Richardson.

  • Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward, (1828-1897)
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On fibrinous deposition in the heart / by Benjamin Ward Richardson. 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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    NOTE I. I append in full the account of the “ serpent in the heart” case, noticed in chapter i, page 3. Dr. May, the author of the case, was a man in good practice in London in his day. We must not laugh at him; for there may be physician-phy- siologists, two hundred years hence, whom we would have forgive our ignorance as we forgive. “ The seventh of October this yeare current, 1637, the Lady Eerris wife unto Sir Francis Flerris Knight, came unto me and desired that I would bring a Surgeon with me, to dissect the body of her Nephew Iohn Pennant, the night before deceased, to satisfie his friends concerning the causes of his long sick- nesse and of his death: And that his mother, to whom my selfe had given helpe some yeares before concerning the Stone, might be ascertained whether her Sonne died of the Stone or no? Upon which intreaty I sent for Master Jacob Heydon Surgeon, dwelling against the Castle Taverne behind St. Clements Church in the Strand, who with his Man-Servant came unto me: And in a word we went to the house and Chamber where the dead man lay: We dissected the naturall Region and found the bladder of the young man full of puru- lent and ulcerous matter: The upper parts of it broken, and all of it rotten: The right kidney quite consumed, the left tumified as big as any two kidnies, and full of sanious matter: All the inward and carnose parts eaten away and nothing remaining but exteriour skins. “No where did we find in his body either Stone or gravel]. The Spleen and Liver not affected in any discernable degree, only part of the Liver was growne unto the Costall membranes, by reason of his writing profession. “ Wee ascending to the Vitall Region, found the LuDgs rea- sonable good, the heart more globose and dilated, then long ; the right Ventricle of an ashe colour shrivelled, and wrinkled like a leather purse without money, and not any thing at all in it: the Pericardium, and Nervous Membrane, which con- teyneth that illustrious liquour of the Lungs, in which the heart doth bath its selfe, was quite dried also : The left Ventricle of the heart, being felt by the Surgions hand, appeared to him to be as hard as a stone, and much greater then the right: Wherefore I wished M. Heydon to make incision, upon which issued out a very great quantity of blood; and to speake the whole verity, all the blood that was in his body left, was gathered to the left Ventricle, and contayned in it. “ No sooner was that ventricle emptied, but M. Heydon still complaining of the greatnesse and hardnesse of the same, my selfe seeming to neglect his words, because the left Ventricle is thrice as thicke of flesh as the right is in sound men for con- servation of Vitall Spirits; I directed him to another disquisition: but he keeping his hand still upon the heart, would not leave it, but said againe that it was of a strange greatnesse and hardnesse ; whereupon I desired him to cut the Orifice wider: by which meanes we presently perceived a carnouse substance, as it seemed to us wreathed together in foldes like a worme or Serpent: at which we both much wondred, and I intreated him to seperate it from the heart, which he did, and we carryed it from the body to the window, and there layed it out, in those just dimensions which are here expressed in the figure. Alongside the body of the serpent”, in the original drawing, is the following certificate “ That the 7. of October, this 1637 an Embriou of this forme and dimentions, as is here described was found in the 1 eft Ventricle of the heart of Iohn Pennant Gentleman, of the age of 21. yeares, or there- abouts. Wee who saw it testifie under our hands: Edward May Doctor of Physick. Iacob Heydon Surgeon. Elizabeth Herris Aunt unto the said Iohn Pennant. Dorothy Pennant Mother to the said Iohn Pennant. Picard Berry -J-Mrs Gentlemans marke. This is my wives marke I testify George Gentleman. The figure has been here reduced to the scale of one linear inch in three.