74 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1713, 



by a fever, which from her cough, a sharp pain under her breast, and other 

 symptoms, was judged pleuritic. But on a discharge from her breast, of a thin 

 serum or gleet, all symptoms vanished. When I saw her first, the liquor dis- 

 charged by a small pin-hole near the papilla, was little more than would have 

 wet a handkerchief fourfold. Examining the breast, I found a large tumour, 

 that lay deep, yielding to my fingers, and pasting like dough. I searched the 

 abscess with a probe, and twisted out with it a matter like saw-dust, or bran, 

 mixed with hair. On laying open the breast, 1 separated a cystic tumour, 

 which weighed 8 oz. and contained a solid matter, like the above mentioned, 

 mixed with a body like hair. 



Inquiring into the manner of its coming, she told me, that 38 years since, 

 she received a contusion in that breast by a fall from a horse, which was attended 

 with great pain and fluxion ; insomuch, that the veins of her breast appeared 

 varicose, and turgid, as in a cancer ; but her pain ceasing, they sunk, and left 

 an indolent tumour in her breast, supposed by her surgeon to be a true scirrhus: 

 since which time it has always continued nearly in the same state, without pain, 

 increasing very little in magnitude, but obstructed in such a manner, that she 

 could not nurse her child with that breast. 



The tunic was pretty thick, nourished with very small vessels, but had 

 formed a scirrhus of the glands it adhered to, by keeping up a distension of 

 parts, till there was a cohesion of their membranes and vessels. I make no 

 doubt, but this was a body of diseased glands, which had suffered a colliqua- 

 tion by some extravasated fluid, and that the membrane of the tumour was 

 their proper tunic. 



After this manner ail our tunicated tumours seem to be formed ; for when an 

 obstruction proceeds to extravasation, there is a liquor poured out, which con 

 sists of such particles, that by degrees make a colliquation of the glandulous 

 flesh, which is not very sensible of pain ; and by degrees the capsula becomes 

 distended with a matter of a very different consistence, which gives the name to 

 the tumour, either steatoma, atheroma, or meliceris. Thus, pour oil of olives 

 on spirit of nitre, and the oil first becomes a little hardened, then of the colour 

 and consistence of marrow, till by degrees it is hardened into a white fat, re 

 sembling that of animals. The possibility of this colliquation and digestion, 

 we may easier be induced to believe, if we consider how often we find the glands 

 of the viscera petrified, without any degree of pain, or the membrane in any 

 measure destroyed: the truth of which, every one conversant with the dis 

 section of morbid bodies, must have observed. 



