Volume 1

On black expectoration, and the deposition of black matter in the lungs, particularly as occurring in coal miners, etc. / by William Thomson.

  • Thomson, William, 1802-1852.
Date:
1837-1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On black expectoration, and the deposition of black matter in the lungs, particularly as occurring in coal miners, etc. / by William Thomson. 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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    and in these my attention was more particularly di- rected to the morbid condition of the heart than of the lungs. Indeed the state of the bronchia has been so uniformly the same, or nearly so, that of late I have not in every case minutely examined it. The mucous membrane is highly vascular, generally soft and swollen, and not unfrequently ulcerated. The lungs in several cases contained black, carbonaceous- looking matter, lying along the course of the bronchial tubes, and enclosed in bags of cellular membrane. I have seen it sometimes distributed through the lungs in little nodules ; and in one case which I dis- tinctly recollect, thus black matter pervaded their whole substance, and the hand of the dissector on being withdrawn from the chest, after the substance of the lungs had been cut into, had the same appear- ance as if it had been dipped in a basin of thick charcoal and water. “It may not, perhaps, be unworthy of being mentioned, that while stone-mining seems injurious, chiefly if not solely, to the pulmonary structure, the deleterious effect produced by the inhalation of choke-damp is exerted principally upon the heart. I have often thought that the production of the black pulmonary matter resulted rather from some condition of the system produced by the circulation through it of imperfectly oxygenated blood, than from any direct effect produced merely on the lungs by the inhaled stone-dust or impure air. There is nothing further in connexion with this subject which occurs to me at present as worth communicating.