On spontaneous gangrene from arteritis and the causes of coagulation of the blood in diseases of the blood-vessels / by Joseph Lister.

Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spontaneous gangrene from arteritis and the causes of coagulation of the blood in diseases of the blood-vessels / by Joseph Lister. 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.

    13/18 (page 13)
    (resident physician under Dr Gairdner) informs me that the cavi- ties contained coagula buffed on their upper surface. The vena cava, the right ihac veins (common, internal and external), and the femoral vein for about four inches dow^n the thigh, contained soft coagula, mixed with thick dark fluid blood. The upper part of the axillary vein and the internal jugular of the same side, also contained some soft dark coagula, but the deep epigastric, the femoral vein below the part before mentioned, the internal saphena, and a smaller venous branch in the thigh, the axillary, except at the upper part, the cephalic and a subcutaneous vein of the throat, all contained fluid blood, which coagulated in about half an hour after being shed; and 1 noticed in the thigh that the blood from a small venous branch coagulated more quickly than that from the saphena. In the veins of the lower limb, both large and small, there were curious strings of highly elastic tawny fibrine, but these had evidently been deposited long before death. Similar threads were also present in the veins of the neck and in the aorta, external iliac and femoral arteries, which, however, contained but little blood, and no post mortem coagula. I did not test the coagulability of the blood in the aiteries, nor in a branch of the internal iliac vein, which also contained fluid blood. I am aware of one source of fallacy in these experiments, namely, that the abdominal viscera are subject to decomposition before the limbs; and as soon as decomposition does set in, the blood coagulates in the parts which are the seat of it; as, for example, in small veins of the intestines. This cause of error was, however, I think, guarded against in the last case ;^ and considering the almost universal occur- 1 Through the kindness of my friend Mr John Gamgee, of the New Veteri- nary College, I have had the opportunity of making further observations re- garding this point, upon an animal with very large blood-vessels, so soon after death as to avoid the risk of incipient decomposition. A healthy horse having been killed by pithing, at 11-30 p.m. on the 22d inst. (March 1858). I examined the body just twelve hours later, while it was still warm. The cavity of the thorax, when opened, smelt perfectly fresh. Both auricles contained large masses of coagulum, buffed on their upper surface. There were also soft dark clots m both ventricles, together with a good deal of fluid blood, which, how- ever, scarcely coagulated at all, a considerable portion from the right ventricle yielding, after many minutes, only a minute thread of fibrin. I suspect this was chiefly serum and corpuscles, which had passed in from the auricles ou relaxation of the ventricles. There was a considerable amount of firm coagu- lum in the aorta, and the large veins at the anterior part of the chest were loaded with firm buffed clot. A small branch beneath the pleura, where it is reflected over the pericardium, contained perfectly fluid blood, as also did a coronary vein of tlie heart, about as large as the saphena of the human thigh • n,!riVf^''T°n''^''?* artery, which was very large (bigger than the human iemoial), had the blood a good deal coagulated. That from the coronary vein having been shed into a saucer, yielded, after some time, threads and lumps of f x An intercostal vein, from beneath the pleura, as big as a crow-quill Y3St.fr' TT'ft- of both f^re^-^^gs 1 s t' i ^ l/l' '''°^'sr'r'^ b^g^/ ^^'^S'-l^ite in about four minuttt ^n.l .sa mto a.olul mass. But, just below the axillary, small portions of