Account of a resection of the ribs and the pleura / read before the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France, April 27, 1818, by M. Le Chevalier Richerand ; translated by Thomas Wilson.

  • Richerand, A. (Anthelme), 1779-1840.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of a resection of the ribs and the pleura / read before the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France, April 27, 1818, by M. Le Chevalier Richerand ; translated by Thomas Wilson. 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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    turning to his place of residence, where he arrived without accident, provided with a piece of boiled leather large enough to cover the cicatrix completely, when perfected. I suffered not the opportunity to escape -which presented itself to prove anew the perfect insensibility of the heart and pericar- dium: nothing warned the patient of the touch of the fingers softly applied to the or- gans. In the state of life, the pericardium in man is possessed of such a transparency that the heart is seen through this membrane as if it were under a glass bell perfectly dia- phonus, it is so much so that we might have been led to believe there were no envelop. It is so far from being so that this complete trans- parency is found on the pericardium of dead bo- dies, and it appears to me, that, in this point of view, this membrane may be compared to the glass of the eye which becomes dim and obscure at the approach of death. A large aperture, with loss of substance made in the contour of the chest, not being necessarily followed by suffocation, a bloodj