88 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1744. 



Hannah Hitchcock, about 6o, was from her youth a very sober industrious 

 woman, of a thin habit of body, and bilious constitution : but in her latter years 

 she became unhealthy, and was frequently subject to fits of the gravel, and 

 brought off some small stones. For about 3 or 4 years before her death, she was 

 often afflicted with nephritic colics, great pains of the stomach and back, sup- 

 pression of urine, and sometimes discharged bloody urine. She at length be- 

 came ascitical and asthmatic ; and, for more than 8 or 10 weeks before she died, 

 she had a violent pain in the region of the stomach, and a hard swelling under 

 the cartilago ensiformis, with almost perpetual vomitings, colic pains, extreme 

 costiveness, and difficulty of urine. The last fortnight, or more, she vomited 

 every thing, and had a total suppression of urine for 15 days. At last she died 

 comatose and convulsed. 



On opening the abdomen, soon after her death, there neither appeared sto- 

 mach, liver, nor guts, but a large irregular mass, spread from one side of the ab- 

 domen to the other, and adhering firmly to both sides. This was, in great part, 

 the omentum, grown, as it were, cartilaginous, and as tough almost as leather ; 

 having in it several large, very hard, scirrhous nodes, and some tubercles, full 

 of fetid pus. The stomach was very much contracted, but its coats were very 

 thick ; and near the pylorus, very much inflamed, almost mortified ; its glands 

 in several places scirrhous, and as large as peas. The passage from the stomach 

 to the guts was shut up, partly by the inflammation and thickness of its coats, 

 and partly by its odd coalition with the liver and omentum. The liver was much 

 shrunk and scirrhous, and rolled up into a kind of conical figure ; in the vertex 

 of which appeared the gall-bladder, of a dark green colour, and very turgid ; and 

 yet the ductus communis choledochus was near 4 times as large as usual. The 

 ilium was thrust down much lower than ordinary ; and the convolutions of the 

 gut were, in several places, grown firmly together: the colon also, on both 

 sides, was strongly attached to the peritonaeum. It is almost constantly observed, 

 where the omentum is either consumed, or greatly depraved, that the convolu- 

 tions of the guts grow together, and adhere to the adjoining parts, for want of 

 that oily mucus, which, in a natural state, in great plenty transudes from the 

 omentum, to lubricate them, and render them fit for the regular performance of 

 the peristaltic motion, &c. In the cavity of the abdomen there were near 6 

 quarts of putrid water, somewhat tinged with blood. In the right cavity of the 

 thorax about a pint. The urinary bladder was quite empty, and half rotten, did 

 not contain a drop of urine, but was smeared over with a sort of purulent matter. 

 In the right kidney was found the larger stone, which took up almost all the pelvis 

 renalis. In the right ureter were two or three small stones, which, with a sort 

 of very tough mucus, had shut its passage entirely. Indeed the great stone in 

 the pelvis had well . nigh quite blocked up the mouth of the ureter. In the lefl 



