A treatise on gall-stones : their chemistry, pathology, and treatment / by J. L. W. Thudichum.

  • Thudichum, J. L. W. (John Louis William), 1829-1901.
Date:
MDCCCLXIII. [1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on gall-stones : their chemistry, pathology, and treatment / by J. L. W. Thudichum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    31/384 (page 9)
    examination of the dead man, when some friends requested him' to assist at the dissection. The stomach appeared to contain nothing but bile; the liver was contracted and con- densed by a scirrhus; the spleen was softer and larger than natural. The gall-bladder was of about the size of two fists, and was in a manner filled with exceedingly small stones, which resembled agglomerations of grains or seeds of millet, or rather to the surface of the common rough tutia (rough oxide of zinc) of the apothecaries’ shops. Veins and arteries contained a fluid which, if it was not bile itself, at least coloured the hands like bile. The next work in which gall-stones in man are referred to is * Gabrielis Falloppii, Medici mutinensis observationes anatomicae,’ Venetiis, 1502, Fol. 178 b of the splendid edition in the library of the Medical Society of London has the following passage:—“In the history of the gall-bladder, I should like to discuss with you (Petrus Manna, a physician at Cremona, to whom the observation was addressed) the concretion of numerous and large stones, which I have often and often found, as well in the gall-bladder itself as in the wide duct which leads from the liver to the intestine. But this place will least allow it.” That Fallopia knew gall-stones already in 1559 is evident from a passage in Dominicus Leonus, ‘ De arte medendi,’ lib. v, cap. vi, where it is said, “ that the great anatomist, in the said year, while teaching anatomy in the public gymnasium at Padua, found five stones suspended in the liver, which were little distant from each other, and of the size of peas ; the teacher showed them to all the scholars present.” In the seventh chapter of his ‘ Tractatus de fossilibus,’ Fallopia makes an attempt to explain the nature and formation of gall-stones, which ends in a lamentable failure. Contemporaneously with Vesalius and Fallopia lived and