On artificial disinfection as a means of preventing the spread of infectious diseases / by J.H. Timins.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On artificial disinfection as a means of preventing the spread of infectious diseases / by J.H. Timins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    Both processes in retrogression can best be studied in the bodies of rats and mice or other small mammals; indeed the latter process can only be studied well in such subjects. Flamming and others have starved dogs and other large mammals for a long period, with the result that they have failed to observe the most interesting and essential part of the process. In rats and mice, more especially the latter, which are often trapped in a starving condition, the system seems to be so exceedingly sensitive to excess or deficiency of nutrition, that they may either fatten or starve within the space of twenty-four hours; the little animal from which Figs. 9, 11, and 12 were drawn, was found almost dead in a jar, into which it had fallen, and in which it could not have remained above twenty-four hours, yet the whole of the different stages of retrogression in fat- cells could be followed upon one preparation of its mesentfiry. This great susceptibility to variation in nutrition is apt to intro- duce an element of uncertainty or confusion into the study of the process of retrogression upon them, for it often happens that the remains of fat-cells, which had been broken up some time previously, are to be found in a preparation where well-developed fat-tracts point to even excessive nutrition. The first changes, during the absorption of the contained fat, seem to occm' in the condition of the fat itself, which, from being of a yellowish-white colour and thick consistency, becomes more transparent, watery, and slightly red in colour. These changes have been previously noted by other observers, who have compared the resulting fluid or fat to serum, although there is nothing of the nature of serum about it, for we find that under the action of osmic acid it blackens even more intensely than in the case of newly formed fat. When once absorption has fairly commenced, if nutrition continues deficient, it follows a steady course, characterized by diminution of the fatty contents and the contraction and thickening of the protoplasmic envelope containing them pari passu with each other. This process is illustrated by Figs. 7, 8, 9, and 10, showing different stages in difierent animals of the process of fat-absorption from fat- cells, and it will be found that in all the mammalia the process and appearances are the same throughout. Fig. 7 is from the body of a young man who died of cancer of the skin, under the care of one of us, at St. John's Hospital. He had entered the hospital only two months before his death, a plump and well-nourished individual, and said that previously he had never had a single day's sickness. His downward progress was rapid, as the whole of the skin of the left side of the thorax became gangrenous, and during the last few days of life he was kept under the influence of morphia, on account of his suff'erings, and as he took little or no food latterly, he died much emaciated. Fig. 7 represents a part of his omentum, taken by permission immediately after death, and stained by silver and