Aneurysms of the aorta : with especial reference to their position, direction and effects : being an exercise for an act for the degree of M.B. in the University of Cambridge / by Oswald Browne.

  • Browne, Oswald Auchinleck, 1855-1908.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aneurysms of the aorta : with especial reference to their position, direction and effects : being an exercise for an act for the degree of M.B. in the University of Cambridge / by Oswald Browne. 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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    It would appear that for many ages, any knowledge of the occurrence of internal aneurysm remained a secret locked within the dead body. An extraordinary veneration for the dead forbad men to open the bodies of the departed except for the process of embalming, a practice which as observed by Matthew Baillie (^), though it might expose many parts of the body to observation, was little likely to do so to the more educated members of the community. And so, in the wi'itings of eaily Greek and Arabian physicians there is no mention of the subject to be found and it was only in the sixteenth century, when at length the human body came to be more frequently examined and dissected after death, that the secret was revealed and that mention of the occurrence of the disorder began to be made with an increasing frequency. Amongst the earliest allusions to the disease may probably be considered that of Carolus Stephanus, early in the sixteenth century, who saw in the carcase of a patient, part of whose lungs on the right side, by- reason of some injury or other, was altogether consumed and corroded, the auricle of the heart on the same side, which had grown into so great a magnitude that it seemed to be three times larger than the other {^); and that of Andreas Laurentius, who found in the Chevalier Guicciardini, that the heart had grown to such a vast bulk as to have become almost a prodigy, and to take up nearly the whole cavity of the thorax, the mouth of the great artery being so much enlarged as to be equal in bigness to the arm (^). (') Introductory lecture to course on anatomy. (') De dissectione partium corporis humani, 1545, (^) Historia Anatomica, 1627. B