Some account of cardiac aneurysms : being the Bradshawe [sic] lecture, read before the Royal College of Physicians of London on August 18, 1883 / by J. Wickham Legg.

  • Legg, J. Wickham (John Wickham), 1843-1921.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of cardiac aneurysms : being the Bradshawe [sic] lecture, read before the Royal College of Physicians of London on August 18, 1883 / by J. Wickham Legg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In this form there are no large nuclei with cells, or translucent matrix, but the whole is formed of fibres. Now and then a muscular fibre, showing well-marked striation, will make its appearance running in the same direction as the fibres. Whether these two forms be the same, differing merely by their age, I do not think that there are at the present moment sufficient grounds to determine. I incline, how- ever, to the opinion that they are distinct. As early as 1872, I placed side by side for comparison instances of these two varieties of chronic myocarditis.^ Of this fibrous degeneration of the heart, what is the cause ? Professor Yirchow (to whom I owe much grati- tude for many acts of kindness to me when a student in Berlin, and whose opinions will be received everywhere as those of the first pathologist in Europe) is, it would seem, the main spring of the opinion that would refer all these changes to syphilis.' Doubtless, owing to his authority, these fibrous changes in the heart were for several years almost unanimously set down as a manifestation of syphilis. But of late years a reaction has set in. We have learnt to trust less to the anatomical structure of the growths, and more to the evidences of syphilis in the other parts of the body. Many cases of fibrous disease of the heart have been recorded in which no other evidence of syphilis could be found. Abundance of such cases may be found in the later volumes of the Transactions of the Pathological Society of London, where all the appearances, once thought diagnostic of syphilis of the heart, have been found, and yet no other signs of syphilis in the rest of the body have been noted, though diligently sought for. Within the last few years there has been broached another theory which attributes these changes in the mus- cular walls of the heart to an interference with their 1 8. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, 1872, vol. viii. pp. 183—186. ' Vircbow, Arch. f. path. Anat. 1859, Bd. xv. p. 982. For biblio- graphy see Lancereaux, Traits historique et pratique de la Syphilis, Paris, 1873. 2e cd. p. 295.