On myxoedema, a term proposed to be applied to an essential condition in the 'cretinoid' affection occasionally observed in middle-aged women / by William M. Ord.

  • Ord, William M. (William Miller), 1834-1902.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On myxoedema, a term proposed to be applied to an essential condition in the 'cretinoid' affection occasionally observed in middle-aged women / by William M. Ord. 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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    11 spond to capillary arteries. In the kidneys a similar thick- ening, growing inwards from the capsules of Malpighian bodies, can be seen encroaching in various degrees up to obliteration upon the contained glomeruli of capillaries (Plate VI, fig. 1). 4. In the liver an enormously disproportionate swollen connective tissue separates the cells from one another, and evidently encroaches on them, and tends to produce atrophy in them (Plate VI, fig. 2). In the thyroid gland the alveoli are compressed, and mostly annihilated, by a growth of the kind which can here be seen in great perfection around the vessels ; and in the mus- cular tissues, particularly in the heart, the same sort of excess of cement, with induced attenuation of the muscular ele- ments, is clearly to be recognised. A natural condition very closely resembling this is to be seen, as Dr. Harley has reminded me, in the umbilical cord, where the connective tissue has also often a dropsical look, from excessive infiltra- tion with the mucus-yielding material. In conditions of this kind arises, as I infer, the inaction of the skin observed in all the cases. This may be explained in two ways, 1st, by the manifest atrophy of the sweat glands; 2nd, by alterations in the nerve-endings in the skin. Where these nerve-end- ings can be observed, it is seen that they are enveloped in soft transparent substance, so as to be padded and removed from the ready operation of incident impulses, tactile, thermal, or chemical. They are so placed, therefore, as to receive fewer impulses, and to receive such as reach them more slowly, so that the first stage of a bradaesthesia is set up. Observation in the case of H. J— showed that there was no material loss of accuracy in perception, while there was a remarkable slowness of response to external and voli- tional impulses. It is possible that a parallel state of things prevailed in the nerves and nervous centres, but, though I have submitted sections of the latter to the microscope, I cannot say positively that they warrant such a conclusion. The existence, however, of a condition of the skin interfering with the natural exposure of nerve-ends to stimuli appears