Pathological observations on the diseases of the placenta / by James Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1835?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathological observations on the diseases of the placenta / by James Y. Simpson. 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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    Placentitis, referable to this stage, and from what I have myself observed in a recent specimen of this form of the dis- ease, the following, I believe, may be deduced as its principal characteristic anatomical cliaracters. The affected part of the organ is of a more or less deep red-colour; its texture when cut into, is found solid and dense, and resembling in consistence and appearance a portion of healthy liver, or of pulmonary struc- ture affected with red hepatization. It is inelastic to the touch, but though increased in compactness and solidity, it is still in general so friable, particularly when the inflammation is acute or recent, as to be readily lacerated or ruptured under any con- siderable pressure. It generally contains more or less of a brownish or reddish turbid liquid, which exudes from its incis- ed surfaces under gentle pressure, or when these surfaces are scraped with the back of the scalpel. But the form under which we most frequently meet with the deposition of coagulable lymph into the parenchymatous struc- ture of the place7ita, is that of reddish and grayish yellow In- duration, the effect, I believe, of chronic inflammatory action. This morbid state of the placenta has been long known to ac- coucheurs, and has generally been described by them, along with some other morbid states of the organ, to be afterwards mentioned, under the name of scirrlius of the placenta. It evi- dently, however, has no pathological relations with scirrhus, at least in the sense in which that term is used at the present day, as designating a carcinomatous state or degeneration of an organ. Chronic induration of the -placenta occurs in cases in which we have no evidence of the presence of the carcinomatous diathesis, in the coexistence or subsequent occurrence of scirrhous disease in any of the other organs of the bodies, either of the mother or of the infant,—it has never been remarked in any instance, (so far at least as I am aware,) to ulcerate or fungate, or take on any of the usual malignant action of scirrhous degenerations,— and the anatomical characters which the indurated placenta ex- hibits, differ from those which are usually considered as charac- teristic of true scirrhus. On the other hand, that Induration of the Placenta is the re- sult of chronic inflammatory action, and the deposition of coagu- lable lymph, seems proved by the consideration of the nature of the morbific causes by which it is produced, (generally blows, falls, and such external injuries as are calculated to give rise to inflammatory action, received several weeks or even months previously to the expulsion of the indurated organ,)—and by the fact, that it is sometimes possible in different placenta, or even, as I have seen, in different parts of the same placenta, to trace the gradations between the increased solidity acute hepatiza- 3