Case of three remarkable tumours extirpated from the nose : communicated in a letter to David Hosack / by P.S. Townsend.

  • Townsend, Peter S. (Peter Solomon), 1796-1849.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of three remarkable tumours extirpated from the nose : communicated in a letter to David Hosack / by P.S. Townsend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    heard them attributed, with plausibility, to the use of salt fish and crude vegetable food. Nothing how- ever like the gigantic growth of Russel's nose was ever seen in the West-Indies, or any where described in the annals of surgery. This patient came to consult me at Nassau, island of New-Providence, about the middle of October 1824. For the last twenty years the nose had not varied materially from the extraordinary dimensions and grotesque appearance which the sketch presents in Plate I. This enormous mass of disease consisted of three lobular tumours, having the appearance of a trilobate pendulous excrescence from the nose. On examination I found them soft to the feel, and not only pitting, but exuding, on pressure, through minute and almost imperceptible pores like those of a carbuncle, a thin, glairy, yellowish pus. For years, he informed me, he had been in the daily habit during the warm weather, of squeezing out through these pores (which are doubtless the original orifices of the diseased sebaceous follicles) a tea-spoonful or more of matter occasionally mixed with blood. They were so moveable as to be easily turned up upon the fore- head, so as to exhibit the openings into the nostrils underneath, which in their natural position, hanging down upon the mouth, they entirely concealed. The middle tumour extended down as far as the lower