Address in pathology : on the autonomous life of the specific infections / by Charles Creighton.

  • Creighton, Charles, 1847-1927.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address in pathology : on the autonomous life of the specific infections / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    communicated directly to the offspring by a sire or dam which had acquired it; and it is all the more necessary to be clear on this point, since, at the present day, the hereditary taint would seem to be so widely distributed throughout the bovine stock as to obscure somewhat the original characters of the disease. In what I have to say, I must speak of the disease as it is primarily acquired, and as it is described in the earliest writings, and by its popular names. It starts then, as a multiple nodular condition of the abdominal and thoracic serous surfaces, it acquires the character of a consti- tutional disease, it goes all through the body, it passes directly to the offspring, it may be inoculated upon healthy animals or com- municated to them by feeding, and it is not improbable that it passes by volatile contagion. The infectiveness within the original body, and the faculty of passing to other animals, is what I would call its autonomous life, and I would look for its pre-autonomous stage in the peculiar groups of multiple nodules on the serous sur- faces. What then is the origin of these nodules, in what relation do they stand to any known disorders of ruminant nutrition, or, rather, of the nutrition of those ruminants that are closely con- fined, artificially fed, and over-milked ? I am not aware that the suggestion which I have to make has occurred to anyone before, and I put it forward, therefore, with some diffidence. This suggestion arises out of a consideration of the forms and favourite seats of the nodules, and of their structure, and degenerations. One cannot help observing that these multiple nodules are especially apt to grow in the seats of fat-formation, and to assume the external form of deposits of fat, either the stalked and pendulous form, or the flattened form of confluent lobules or patches. Now the bovines are somewhat peculiar in the way in which they lay on fat. They have not so much of subcutaneous fat as the sheep or the pig, but they are very apt to have internal for- mations of adipose tissue, sometimes in situations where one would imagine that it could serve none of the ordinary purposes of fat. Besides the common deposits of fat about the abdominal organs and in the thorax, there may be lumpy masses of it even on the pleura covering the ribs, and on the diaphragm; and, in highly fed animals it is not unusual to find a lobulated layer of the same tissue all over the surface of the spleen, and even on the surface of the liver. It can hardly escape us that those serous surfaces which are invaded in the course of this excessive fat-forming habit, are just the localities where the pearl nodules are found. There is, indeed, one rather important exception to this rule, namely, the borders and surfaces of the lungs. I cannot say whether a border of fat ever occurs round the margins of the lungs in cattle, as it occurs. round the spleen and liver, or under the pulmonary pleura, as it is found under the costal pleura; but, if that should be the case, , the analogy with the pearl-disease would be complete, so far as situa- tion goes; otherwise, we must explain the nodule of the pulmonary pleura on the hypothesis of secondary infection. As regards form, the resemblance between the physiological and the pathological formations is most striking; in both cases we may find either a finely lobulated stratum of translucent tissue, or coarser lumpy masses, or pendulous nodules. But, after all, the diseased nodules of the serous membranes are not fat, or, at all events, they are not composed of adipose tissue throughout most of their extent. They are not multiple lipomata; but it would be strictly correct to describe them as multiple fibro- mata, or sarcomata with a deficient blood-supply, or rather as a multiple tumour-formation containing a mixture of those two kinds of tissue, growing in the seats of fat-formation, and assuming the lobulated, or lumpy, or pendulous forms of the sub-serous fat.