Spinal cord from a case of tetanus following ovariotomy / by Vincent Harris and Alban Doran.

  • Harris, Vincent Dormer, 1851-1931.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Spinal cord from a case of tetanus following ovariotomy / by Vincent Harris and Alban Doran. 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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    t »' '• 'S ‘ 4^ «■ Reprinted from the ‘ Transactions of t\e Pathological Society of London,' 1880. O 1, .v <w ■- • K *♦ -w £ Spinal cord frotnxi case of tetanus 'following ovariotomy. i; IIarrtsT^I.D., and Alban Doran. By Vincent On November 28tb, 1879, Dr. Bantock removed a unilocular par- ovarian cyst from a robust young countrywoman, ast. 24, at tbe Samaritan Hospital. The pedicle was found to be twisted ; it was readily secured by a single ligature. The patient was removed, on the fourth day after the operation, to another ward, and placed in a bed between a window and the fireplace. She progressed very favorably until the morning of the seventh day, when she com- plained of stiffness of the muscles of mastication on tbe side of the face which was turned towards the window. Her bed was moved, but undoubted symptoms of trismus and tetanic spasms of the sterno-mastoids and trapezii developed themselves before nightfall. By the next morning the attacks of trismus had become very fre- quent, and added to them was very severe spasm of the inspiratory muscles, so that during each paroxysm the thorax remained violently expanded ; on the other hand, there was little opisthotonos, and the muscles of the abdomen and lower extremities were hardly affected. The patient died asphyxiated at the end of the second day of the tetanic symptoms, and the eighth after ovariotomy. To alleviate her sufferings, chloroform had been freely administered, and within twelve hours of her death she had taken sixty grains of chloral and two drachms of tincture of Indian hemp by enemata, as well as two thirds of a grain of extract of Calabar bean hypodermically. The effects produced by these drugs were very transient. The case occurred during the intense cold of the past winter, and . the post-mortem examination was made twelve hours after death in a room the temperature of which was 20° F. ; the body had lain there for several hours. The cord was immediately removed, stripped of its membranes, and notched by the scalpel at intervals of two or three inches. It was then placed in Muller’s fluid, and afterwards hardened in chromic acid and spirit. In the cervical and upper dorsal region the distinction between the grey and the white matter did not appear so plain as in a normal specimen. The posterior columns and the entire grey matter were here very red. There was deep congestion of the pia mater betw’een the origins of the pos-