Spinal cord from a case of tetanus following ovariotomy / by Vincent Harris and Alban Doran.

  • Harris, Vincent Dormer, 1851-1931.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Spinal cord from a case of tetanus following ovariotomy / by Vincent Harris and Alban Doran. 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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    Clarke’s “ transparent patches,”1 Dickinson’s “ transparent exuda- tion,”2 and Coats’s “ area, in which the nerve-fibres and connective tissue do not take on the carmine.”3 An examination of another tetanic cord sent to us by a distinguished surgeon confirms our belief that these transparent patches are the result of partial de- composition. This cord was sent to us in a weak solution of spirit, but the membranes had not been removed nor the cord notched. A vain attempt was made to thoroughly harden this cord ; the few sections that could be prepared all presented numerous transparent blotches, which it was found impossible to colour by any medium. Hence, in the ovarian case, the few sections where these patches could be seen were probably from a part of the cord too far from some of the notches made into it to allow perfect permeation of the hardening medium. The appearance of the grey commissure immediately surround- ing the central canal in the upper dorsal region was as follows :— Here morbid changes are more advanced than in the lower part of the cord. The want of symmetry seen in the entire section extends to its central canal, across which there passes a band of homogeneous yellowish material, apparently continuous with the protoplasm of the epithelium, with which it is connected at both ends. It bears three or four nuclei in its broader portion ; these are probably derived from the epithelium. The neuroglia-nuclei are, in most of the sections from the upper part of the cord, as ab- normally abundant as in the lumbar region ; in the specimen here figured they appear less conspicuously numerous. The band across the canal was found in eleven sections, all from the upper dorsal region, and all free from transparent patches. It appears to be exudation thrown off from the epithelium, and probably represents au inflammatory condition, which was commencing to spread down to the lumbar region when the patient died. The vessels in the grey commissure posterior to the canal are much distended in all specimens where the canal is traversed by the band above referred to, and the lymph spaces round them appear wider than usual. In the cervico-dorsal sections the fine reticulated stroma of the anterior columns shows irregular thickening of its interlacing fibres, 1 ‘ Med.-Chir. Trans.,’ vol. xlviii, pp. 258, 259. 2 Ibid., vol. li. 3 Ibid., vol. lxi, p. 82.