The Retrospect of Medicine (Volume 50) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of the sweat-glands were thickened, and the epithelium lining them was so muob increased that in most cases it obstructed their channels. In some of the sweat-glands the coils of which they were composed were loaded with coagulated blood, and were greatly and irregularly distended. In the other recent case the appearances were similar, excepting that the external layers of the cuticle were stained with blood in minute patches, and tlie sweat-ducts were also reddened; but there were no extravasations of blood either in the glands or cutis. In some of the ducts the epithelium was detached from the basement membranes. In the case of a man who died during the third week the sudoriferous tubes were still choked up, but in the glands the epithelium seemed in many places to be torn away, leaving the basement membranes bare, or only covered by ragged particles. The cutis was in a natural condition. The author stated that although he had, in accordance with the usual custom, described the appearances of the skin and mucous membranes as the results of inflammation, yet that certain considerations suggested the idea that the term when so used was perhaps misapplied. In scarlatina, we find that in each part the morbid condition is mostly confined, in the first instance, to the basement membranes, and consists in the formation of layers of new cells, which, in the skin, are transformed into cuticle of natural appearance, and in the stomach contain pepsine. If future researches should prove that a similar condition occurs in the kidneys and other parts, it will be necessary to look upon the structural changes produced as resulting from increased physiological, rather than from pathological action; and that the primary effect of the scarlatina poison ia suddenly and violently to stimulate th...