Abstract of cases in which pseudo-membranous substances have been discharged from the bowels / by William Thomson.

  • Thomson, William, 1802-1852.
Date:
[1836 or 7]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Abstract of cases in which pseudo-membranous substances have been discharged from the bowels / by William Thomson. 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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    at an early period, and the stools were white, brown, or some- what greenish, and streaked in colours, until the films began to pass, when they were mixed with a full sufficiency of bile, but not at first of a healthy colour. The pulse throughout was calm, moderate and natural, in none of the instances amounting to 90. It of course did not indicate the existence of any in- flammatory action, and still less was it disposed to assume that peculiar irritative quickness which marks enteritis. In one case, I noticed a very considerable hardness and contraction of the abdominal muscles, and in another, there was superadded to the above symptoms, a difficulty in passing the urine, with pain in the region of the bladder; and here the use of the catheter be- came necessary. Under the steady use of a mixture of the com- pound infusion of gentian, and infusion of senna, with the addi- tion of liquor potassm, repeated so as to produce four or more stools in the twenty-four hours, the flakes first separated and continued to do so in great abundance ; the jaundice disappear- ed, and the patients recovered health ami strength. “ I missed the opportunities,' Dr l’owell adds, “ of examining the qualities of the flakes thus evacuated, but a quantity of them was put into spirit of wine for preservation, and was con- tracted by its action, so as to look almost fibrous rather than membranous, as at first, by which one is led to suppose that they may consist of albumen, though this is only a supposition. It is very different from that effusion which often coats the serous membranes of circumscribed cavities, which remains at- tached to the part from which it is effused, permanently ag- glutinates neighbouring surfaces, and becomes an organized sub- stance.” (’asi*; 23. An officer, aged 45, had from his boyhood, fre- quently suffered from epistaxis. From his 15th year he had been subject to haemorrhoids, at first open, afterwards blind, with constipation, flatulence, congestions, palpitation of the heart, and other hypochondriacal ailments, and not unfrcquently with tertian and quartan fever. The hypochondriacal affections after- wards increased, accompanied with spasms and pains which forced him to cry out. lie had frequent attacks of haemoptysis, a sense of weight in his chest, feverish paroxysms, and convulsive cough. After the long-continued use of clysters, at\ immense quantity of mucous and atrabilious matter was passed daily by 6tool* At the same time salivation came on spontaneously. This was succeeded by inflammation of the lungs terminating in miliary fever. '1 he clysters being continued, he frequently passed a quantity of matter, amounting to several pounds, partly consisting of black and fetid blood, partly of mucus with firmer masses of about the size of an egg. At last polypous mat-