A practical treatise on medical diagnosis for students and physicians / by John H. Musser.

  • Musser, John Herr, 1856-1912.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on medical diagnosis for students and physicians / by John H. Musser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    chronic bronchitis and in phthisis. Their presence in the sputum in cases of phthisis is considered by Teichrnuller to be of favorable import. Red Blood-corpuscles. These are to be found in most sputa, but they may be so few as not to give a red color. The source is often high up in the respiratory tract. When they are present in large numbers, the sputum is more or less tinged, and in haemoptysis it is almost wholly made up of red cells. Usually each cell is well preserved, but they may appear as pale bodies or as rings, the pigment remaining in the sputum as pigment-particles or as crystals of hsematoidin, as in pneu- monia. Epithelium. Two general varieties of epithelium are found in the sputum—squamous and cylindrical. The former comes from the mucous membrane of the mouth, the tongue, the tonsils, the true vocal cords, and perhaps from the salivary and the small bronchial glands. Squamous epithelium is of no clinical importance. (See Fig. 216.) Fig. 216. Various objects from sputum : 1, squamous epithelium; 2, red blood-corpuscles ; 3, polynuelear leucocytes; 4, alveolar cells ; 5, myelin-cells; 6, pigment-cells; 7, elastic tissue fibres; 8, squamous cells; 9, hsematoidin crystals; 10, phosphate crystals ; 11, fungi; 12, fat-globules; 13, free pigment. (Original observation.) Cylindrical cells in sputum are rarely perfect. It is uncommon to find the cilia intact, and still more so to see them in motion, while the body of the cells is likely to be changed. They are found in inflamma- tions of the trachea and bronchi, or of the posterior nasal fossa, a locality where, it must be remembered, ciliated epithelium exists. Alveolae epithelium, so called, when found in the sputum, is more important than the above, as different observers consider its pres- ence to have more or less clinical significance. The cells are elliptical or round, somewhat larger than white corpuscles, with. a single nucleus, which is indistinct without the addition of acetic acid. The protoplasm is granular and contains particles of iron-dust, carbon, or blood-coloring matter, and often fat-drops. The cells may also have undergone com- plete fatty degeneration, and they have been considered the source of myelin-drops in the sputum.