Volume 10

Scientific memoirs by medical officers of the army of India.

Date:
1885-1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Scientific memoirs by medical officers of the army of India. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the preparations obtained were in good condition, and perhaps sufficiently in- teresting to warrant a short description. At the autopsy the following macro- scopic appearances were noted :— The general nourishment was fairly good: the pupils were equally and normally dilated. The pericardium was normally moist, the heart weighed io ozs. after being opened, the myocardium was of a dark brown colour, the aorta was atheromat- ous and the aortic cusps were slightly thickened and puckered. The left lung was partly adherent to the parietal pleura by old adhesions; it weighed i lb. 2 ozs., and the lower lobe was the seat of marked hypostatic congestion: the right lung was apparently normal. The peritoneum was normally moist, the walls of the intestine had a dirty brown colour from melanotic pigmentation but were otherwise normal. The liver was enlarged, weighed 31b. 3 ozs., and was of a dirty sepia brown colour. The cut surface was very dry and firm in consistence. The kidneys had slightly adherent capsules, with slightly diminished cortices and congested medullae. Their colour was browner than normal. The suprarenal capsules and pancreas were normal in characters. The spleen, 13 ozs. in weight, just reached the costal arch. Its capsule was thickened, the external colour deep iron-grey, on section the cut surface was firm and had a very deep purplish sepia colour. The blood wrhich exuded on pressure was of the same hue. On opening the skull, the dura was fairly normal on its external surface, the sub-dural and arachnoid fluids were much increased in amount. The pia mater was dusky, as if sprinkled with soot. The brain weighed 2lb. 12 ozs. it was firm in consistence, and the grey matter throughout, both cortical and nuclear, was much congested and of a dark sepia grey colour. No capillary haemorrhages were noted. Microscopic examination showed the following to be the most important changes:— 1. The Brain.—The small arteries and capillaries throughout the organ, but especially in the grey matter, were found to be loaded with red blood corpuscles, almost every one of which contained a parasite on the point of sporing, with central melanin pigment. So uniform and general was this condition that, with a low powder, the preparations presented the appearance of an injection of the brain with a fine emulsion of charcoal. Such a vessel under a high power (iinch oil immersion), is shown in PI. If., Fig. C. In some places emboli of coarse granular pigment masses, free in the plasma, were also seen. In the larger veins and arteries parasite-infected red cells were much less common than in the capillaries, and in cross-sections of these vessels the diseased cells could be seen to adhere to the vessel wall, forming a peripheral layer similar to the arrangement assumed by leucocytes in inflammation. It appears to be probable that a large part of this occlusion of the brain capillaries with H