The morbid anatomy of the bowels, liver and stomach illustrated by a series of plates from drawings after nature, with explanatory letter-press and a summary of the acute and chronic affections of the above-named organs / by John Armstrong.

  • Armstrong, John, 1784-1829.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The morbid anatomy of the bowels, liver and stomach illustrated by a series of plates from drawings after nature, with explanatory letter-press and a summary of the acute and chronic affections of the above-named organs / by John Armstrong. 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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    black, from an apparently carbonaceous deposit. In most cases, the blood is found of a singularly rich dark purple colour, and often remains a fluid gore or jelly in the heart aud large adjacent vessels; the specific bronchitis having so affected it as to occasion many of those symptoms which have erroneously been referred directly to the nervous system. We have another and as striking an example of a change of secretion in diabetes, where the urine is super-abundant in quantity, and where, upon evaporation, it affords a saccharine residuum, resembling treacle or molasses. Before the appearance, and during the course of this complaint, the functions of the skin, of the mucous membrane of the stomach or small intestines, as well as those of the liver, are simultaneously or successively disturbed, and the blood, being affected from some fault in the process of digestion, the quantity and quality of the urine are changed, as an ultimate result, the blood having been altered in its properties independently of the kidney, having previously lost, according to the observations of Dobson and Rollo, its ordinary salts, so that the serum resembled whey. The more minute, therefore, our investigations become, the more reason we shall probably have for concluding, that the blood is affected, in most cases, where the secretions are so, and that every thing is not dependent upon the action of the vessels, a term to which no precise meaning has yet been attached in pathological discussions. But the urine is often scanty and high-coloured, and wherever that occurs day after day, Inflammation of a serous, fibrous, or cellular texture is mostly pre- sent. In the last century, Dr. Baynard had the urine, to use the quaint language of the time, chymically anatomized, in a case of highly Acute rheumatism, and it contained only the thirtieth part of the salts usually found in the same quantity of healthy urine, and hence he inferred the acrimony of the blood. In many cases, particularly in nei phritic ones, the urine contains albumen—a sign of the inflammatory diathesis. The Concrete secretions are of two kinds, the separated and the attached. Biliary and urinary calculi are specimens of the separated secretions; and what are called gout- stones might, without any great violation of propriety, be placed under this head. But gout-stones are the products of Inflammation, a fluid resembling lymph, as I have found from examination, being first effused, and that finally becoming solid. In like manner, what is called ossification of the valves of the heart and arteries seems to be the effect of Inflammation; for again and again, in different parts of the arterial system, in the same body, I have found evidences of the Inflammation in all its various stages—in one part redness and opacity, in another, the effusion of lymph and thickening; in a third, a fibrous or almost cartilaginous appearance ; and, in a fourth, ossification,