On hydatids of the lung : their diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, and observations on their relations to pulmonary consumption, and other diseases of the chest / by S. Dougan Bird.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On hydatids of the lung : their diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, and observations on their relations to pulmonary consumption, and other diseases of the chest / by S. Dougan Bird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the symptoms to those of phthisis—in the lower lobe, to pleuritic effusion or some solid tumour. They exhibit no very decided preference for one or other lung, but are, I think, rather more common on the right side. The size of the sac is limited only by the capacity of the chest, the compressibility of the lung and absence of pleuritic adhesions, and the amount of disturbance to which the entozoon has been subjected by cough, external shocks as from falls, &c., and by operative interference and internal remedies. I have tapped cysts holding three or four pints of fluid, by which the lung has been compressed almost to the same extent as occurs in cases of empyema. But these are rare in Victoria, as the nature of the disease is generally recognised and treatment employed at an earlier stage. From eight to sixteen ounces of fluid is about the average capacity when they should be diagnosed with certainty and operated upon. Furthermore, the nature and density of the cyst, and its influence on the lung tissue in which it is embedded, are most important pathological points in guiding us to a diagnosis. Dr. Walshe observes:— The natural history of the echinococcus, of the acephalocysts it inhabits, and of the mother cyst, is essentially the same in this organ as in their greatly more common seat, the liver. There is this difference, however, that the mother acephalocyst sometimes lies in direct contact with the lung texture, and, unlike that of the liver, is rarely surrounded with a thick shell or cyst-like wall of pseudo areolar tissue. The sac rarely attains great size. . . . Acephalocysts may be found in the midst of perfectly healthy tissue; this is very rare.