Selected Monographs.

  • New Sydenham Society.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected Monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    appears useful to mention now. The results which I am about to state were submitted to the competent control of my friends MM. Luys and Chalvet, whom I wish to thank for the help which they have given me. VII. When we examine attentively an extremity affected with dry gangrene, that which strikes us at first is the perfect preservation of the external form. The rows of the papillae of the skin are even more apparent than in the normal condition, on account of the thinning of the epidermis. On making transverse sections we find sometimes, immediately under the cutaneous envelope, small dark grains of irregular form of the size of a pin's head which are easy to enucleate. Seen by re- flected light they appear of the most beautiful black; they are so hard that they rebound when we let them fall on a solid body; they might be taken for small morsels of charcoal. Nevertheless these grains are none other than blood concretions. When with some difficulty a section has been obtained sufficiently thin for microscopic examination, this section seen as a transparent object appears of a beautiful red. Treated by ether, thin fragments of this substance dissolve and communicate to the liquid a rose tint. There remains in the preparation an infinite number of irregular granules less refracting than fat, and which have all the characters of broken-up albumen. Let us proceed now from the surface to the deeper parts. On examining detached portions with the point of a scapel, under the microscope there is to be seen, amongst cells and debris of epithelial cells more or less altered, a certain number of free fatty vesicles and of small masses of dark tint with very definite outline. These are, if one is not mistaken, the gan- grenous corpuscles represented in the work of M. Demme. The colour varies from clear brown to black, without its being possible to establish between these varieties a precise limit. It is easy to recognise in them the appearance of effusions of colouring matter of the blood such as are to be found in a crowd of pathological conditions. It is much to be feared that the gangrenous corpuscle will be regarded in the same way as the inflammatory corpuscle of Gluge and the famous cancerous corpuscle; that far from making of it a specific element, it will be possible to regard it as none other than one of the divers alterations of the normal tissues.