VOL. XXV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIOITS. SIQ 



1. She measured round the waste a yard and three quarters, and from the 

 scrobiculus cordis to the os pubis a yard and a quarter. 1. All the cutaneous 

 veins of the abdomen were of a very unusual and extraordinary size, and very 

 much distended with blood; and from the largest of them, being opened, I 

 extracted several polypous concretions. 3. The cuticula, from the umbilicus 

 downwards, was rough and scaly to the naked eye: in several parts it appeared 

 gangrened, occasioned probably by the sharpness of the serum that always 

 oozed out of it, when she scratched the little pimples or wheals that arose 

 on its surface; these for some time used to go off without any scar, but as her 

 strength decayed they became mortified. 



4. Upon all the regio epigastrica the outward integuments were very thin, 

 little or no fat being visible: but from the upper part of the regio umbilicalis, 

 down to the OS pubis, the skin was almost half an inch thick, of a whitish 

 colour, and hard, some of it appearing as if it were granulated, caused by 

 some obstructions in the miliary cutaneous glands. 5. The fat under this part 

 of the skin was upwards of an inch thick, being distributed into several lo- 

 bules of an irregular figure, and lodged in so many cells adhering to the mem- 

 brana adiposa, which in this place was also much thicker than it usually is in a 

 natural state. 6. Her thighs, legs, and feet were all anasarcous, being extremely 

 thick and swelled, and easily retaining any impression made by the fingers; and 

 her nurse told me, that she used to wet a great deal of linen in drying up the 

 water, that would always issue out from these parts on the least rubbing; yet 

 all her superior parts were extremely lean and emaciated. 



7. The fleshy part of the abdominal muscles was much extenuated by the 

 great distension, yet their tendons were as thick as usual ; and being very easily 

 separable from each other, I could plainly observe that the tendon of the ob- 

 liquus internus adhered firmly to that of the transversalis, along the edge of 

 the musculus rectus, and was not double, as Realdus Columbus, and all anato- 

 mists after him, down to Diemerbroeck, who was first aware of this mistake, 

 have maintained: however, this straight muscle derives the same benefit from 

 this situation, being as it where hemmed in on one side by his firm adhesion, 

 and on the other side by the linea alba, as if it had indeed been inclosed 

 between the two supposed tendons of the obliqums ascendens; that is, it is 

 much strengthened thereby in time of acting. I observed also that the tendons 



dissecter and accurate observer. In particular it contains an excellent comparison of the muscles of 

 the dog with those of the human subject, 3 A Description of the Peritonaeum, containing several 

 new and valuable observations relative to the structure of that membrane. By his lectures as well 

 as bis writings. Dr. James Douglas contributed largely to the advancement and diifiision of anatomical 

 knowledge in this country. -^UIY«3 filod ni 



