Researches on the nature, pathology, and treatment of emphysema of the lungs, and its relations with other diseases of the chest / by A.T.H. Waters.

  • Waters, A. T. Houghton (Alderman Thomas Houghton), 1826-1912.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches on the nature, pathology, and treatment of emphysema of the lungs, and its relations with other diseases of the chest / by A.T.H. Waters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    adult human lung vary in diameter from l-45tli to l-85th of an inch. (For illustrations of this para- graph, see Plate I., figs. 1 and S.) The walls of which the air-sacs are composed are exceedingly thin, and much sacculated; i.e., they have in them a number of small, shallow, cup-like depressions, sepai'ated from each other by portions of membrane, which are more or less raised, and project into the interior of the sacs. The bottom of an air- sac presents the same appearance as its lateral walls; and the cup-like depressions, or alveoli, are there veiy numerous. The number of these alveoli varies very much ; I have counted as many as ten at the fundus of an air-sac in a cat's lung; in the human being I have counted five and six, but the number is not usually quite so great. I have found the entire number in each air-sac varying from eight to twenty. (See Plate II., figs. 3 and 4.) The air-sacs rest, externally, by their fundus, on the pleura; but within the substance of the lung they in part rest on, and are supported by, the bron- chial tubes and blood-vessels. The air-sacs are separated from each other by thin walls; the membrane composing which, in a lung inflated and dried, is very transparent. The projec- tions of this membrane in the shape of thin processes, having a sharp margin, constitute the septa between the alveoli; and wherever an opening exists, leading into a smaller sac, this membrane projects in a similar way, and forms a circular orifice, which is much smaller than the cavity to which it leads : the