Toner Lectures; Instituted to Encourage the Discovery of New Truths for the Advancement of Medicine (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873. Excerpt: ... fragile, and when they are called into play by the distension from meteorism, by the efforts at coughing and other violent respiratory acts, by defecation, rising in bed, the movements of the legs, etc., they rupture with the greatest ease. Spasm or direct violence does not seem to have been noticed in any case. The arteries, which have also undergone an analogous change, are involved in this rupture, and muscular hemorrhages result. These assume three forms, according to their size and mechanical limitation: 1, ecchymoses; 2, diffuse infiltration into the muscular tissue, soaking it with blood; or, 3, distinct haematomata, the last being the most important and probably the most frequent. The effused clot, at first hard, well defmed, and sharply limited, gradually softens and not infrequently suppurates, thus producing serious abscesses which, unless opened, may even burst into the peritoneal cavity.1 Meanwhile the swollen muscular fibres gradually undergo re-absorption, until, finally, they disappear entirely, and a new formation of cells takes place in the perimysium, which, according to Hoffmann, first become spindle-shaped, then coalesce endwise with one another, and gradually assume the appearance of striated muscular fibre. Complete repair is then effected. The resemblance of these spindle-shaped cells, which are nascent muscular fibres, to the muscular fibre-cells is most striking, and seems to form a link connecting the two forms of muscular tissue, the striated and non-striated, such as I have long taught to be probable. Almost all of the muscles may be thus invaded, but the favorite seats both for the degeneration and the haematomata are in the recti abdominis and the adductors of the thigh, then in the pectorals, and, as Hoffmann has noticed in...