Medical and surgical monographs / by Andral [and others] with occasional comments by the editor of the library and others.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical and surgical monographs / by Andral [and others] with occasional comments by the editor of the library and others. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    not be called plethoric, having been the subject of her emaciating complaint more than a year and a half. Milky serum, though of a far less marked character, having occurred in persons who have been bled shortly after making a hearty meal, the notion has been entertained that it is owing to the passage of liquid chyle into the circulation. This was Haller's opinion, while others have attri- buted its appearance to admixture of fat. To the former notion it may be objected, that whereas it is certain that the milky appear- ance of serum is owing to the presence of oily particles, it is very doubtful, from the discordant opinions of eminent chemists, whether the chyle contains more oily matter than the blood itself Berzelius. indeed, makes its solid part to consist of more than twenty-one per cent, of fat, and Raspail considers it as ditiering little from milk. Prout, however, whose analysis is adopted by Turner, only admits an unappreciable trace of oily matter in chyle, and makes its compo- sition differ little from blood, except as respects the absence of red particles. In milky serum the oil exists in superabundance, at the expense of the albumen, which, in all the specimens I have examined, has been remarkably deficient in proportion, its specific gravity varying from 1.019 to 1.024. This circumstance naturally leads to a question whether this oil may not owe its origin to some chemical change in the albumen itself, of which it seems to supply the place. The remarkable blood, described by M. Caventou,* and alluded to by M. Raspail,^ whicli was evidently nothing more than blood with milky serum, affords additional ground for sup- posing that such a change takes place. This blood, issuing from the vein, was turbid, of a pale dirty red colour, and became marled and of a whitish red as it cooled in the basin, and some drops, which fell on the floor, assumed this colour in a few seconds, and looked like drops of chocolate made with milk. After half an hour a coagulum of moderate size was formed in it, which floated in a large quantity of a white opaque fluid exactly like milk. Raspail, who had evidently never seen a marked example of milky blood, gives the following fanciful explanation of the appearance. Under the influence, or in the absenceof oneof the causes which together produce the circulation, an acid had been formed, which, saturating the alkaline menstruum of the albumen, had caused it to coagulate. Now this irregular coagulation could not take place without dis- guising tbe colour of the blood, and rendering it rose-coloured, while it would j^ive the serum the appearance of milk. If the albumen had really been coagulated by an acid, a distinct clot would not have been formed by it, but a curdled precipitate; nor would the serum have borne any resemblance to milk. But what is important as confirming my view respecting the conversion mentioned above, M. Caventou, to his great astonisfiment, could not find any albumen in the milky scrum here described. The probability of this change is heightened by the consideration tliat soniething analogous must necessarily or-cur in the formation of ' Annalcs Jo (Jliimie, vol. xxxix. p. 288. ^ Sect. 941.