Eight cases of melanosis : with pathological and therapeutical remarks on that disease / by William Norris.

  • Norris, William.
Date:
1857
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eight cases of melanosis : with pathological and therapeutical remarks on that disease / by William Norris. 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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    smallest nails and the largest steam engines, cannons, &c.; where persons are frequently breathing air clouded with black smoke. On the Treatment. Perhaps it may be well to hope, when the disease begins in a mole, wart, or cellular tissue of a young person, that the disease is only local, and the sooner it is removed by the knife or caustic, the more prospect of success; for it appears soon to have the power to contaminate the neighbouring' parts. Mr. Pemberton has related cases where the disease has been kept longer in abeyance by the use of caustics than any other plan. If a patient applied to me with a mole or wart in a state of irritation, tingeing the skin around of a dark brown hue, or with a small melanotic tumour in the cellular tissue, I should immediately not only remove the disease, but cut away some of the healthy parts. Mr. Pemberton thinks caustic merits a fair trial, and I am inclined to be of his opinion; for in an intractable disease like this, we may adventure with our remedies. I would, after excising the part, touch the wound with caustic, so as not to leave an atom of disease if possible, and occasionally apply the same remedy to the skin in the vicinity; so as to endeavour to excite a new action to supersede the diseased action. Should the disease reappear in the cicatrix, or near, I should at once freely apply eaustic. Should tubera appear in remoter parts, it will too plainly tell us it is no longer a local disease, and that the knife and local means will be of little avail; and that the circulating mass is contaminated with melanotic matter, and that secondary deposits are affecting vital organs. In the earliest stage of the disease we should regulate every funetion, and sedulously attend to the digestive organs, and endeavour to make more pure blood, for the blood is very black, and if deprived of its saline particles we may give carbonates of potass and soda, and more salt may be taken with the food. A regular course of arsenic may be useful. The power of this medicine has lately astonished me in a case of scirrhous breast in a female, more than fifty years of age; in a few months it vanished, by doses such as are recommended by my zealous friend Mr. Hunt, of London. This female's mother died with cancer. I used arsenic in my third case of melanosis, and the disease had not returned for eight years. Patients should be removed from smoky districts to the pure air of the country; perhaps more oxygen, diffused through the air they breathe, may be beneficial. In the present state of our knowledge, when the disease appears in several parts of the body, physic will, I fear, uniformly fail, and surgery will be foiled. If I have thrown the faintest light on the pathology of this obscure disease, or given the least information on curative measures, that may more or less arrest its progress, I shall be satisfied; and shall be much pleased if I have stimulated modern pathologists to confinn or confute my humble statements.