VOL. XLVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 640 



A Letter from John Jns. Huher, M.D., concerning a Dead Bodi/, in which the 

 Gall-bladder was wantiufi;^ and concerning a Gibbosity of the Sternum, jin 

 Abstract from the Latin. N° 492, p. 92. 



1 . In the dead body of a woman, about 60 years of age, Dr. H. found the 

 liver to be destitute of a gall-bladder ; but its place was supplied by a preternatu- 

 ral enlargement of the hepatic duct, which was wide enough to admit the little 

 finger. The coat of this duct (the hepatic duct) was nearly as thick as the coats 

 of the arteries, not white, but yellowish, villous within, and dotted with a num- 

 ber of small spots, which Dr. H. supposes to have been so many simple folliculi. 

 From the liver to the duodenum this duct was of the before-mentioned diameter, 

 so that it might easily have been taken for the vena portarum : but it opened 

 into the duodenum by an orifice of the usual form and dimension. In like 

 manner the pori biliarii were enlarged to the size of arteries ; they were all of a 

 yellow colour externally, and were turgid with bile. 



2. Not in a single subject, but in the bodies of many children. Dr. H. had 

 observed a deformity of the chest, which he imputes to an improper mode of 

 handling and nursing. This deformity was particularly striking in the case of an 

 infant 8 weeks old, in whom the sternum was so exceedingly prominent, and 

 the cartilages of the ribs (at their junction with the sternum) were so much 

 pressed inwards (more so on the left than on the right side), as to give to the 

 thorax the resemblance of a saddle. On opening the thorax, several of the de- 

 pressed ribs were found to be gibbous on the surface next the lungs, thus con- 

 tributing not a little to the straitening of the cavity of the chest. The lungs 

 were found obstructed, and adhering in many places to the pleura. Hence (re- 

 marks Dr. H.) it is easy to comprehend how children thus deformed die con- 

 sumptive. 



Dr. H. suspects that this deformity is occasioned by a very common but very 

 improper mode of nursing, which consists in grasping the child's buttocks, and 

 letting its body, inclined forwards, rest on the right hand applied, with expanded 

 fingers, to the chest, and in this posture repeatedly tossing the child up and 

 down. During this exertion, the whole weight of the child's body falls on the 

 nurse's right hand, whence the pressure is often so great, as to cause the carti- 

 lages of the ribs (at that early period of growth) to give way, leaving pits or de- 

 pressions in the places where resistance was opposed by the nurse's fingers. This 

 was particularly conspicuous in the infant above mentioned. Those therefore 

 who have the care of children should be cautioned against handling them in this 

 manner. Dr. H. adds that the deformity above described must not be confounded 

 with rickets. 



VOL. IX. 



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