2i4 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNN0 1758. 



LXXIT. A Remarkable Case of Cohesions of all the Intestines, &c. in a Man of 

 about 34 Years of Age, who died in the Summer \7bJ, and afterwards Jell 

 under the Inspection of Mr. Nicholas Jenty. p. 550. 



The subject was tall, and partly emaciated. Mr. J. found nothing externally 

 but a wound in the left side, which seemed to have been degenerated into an 

 ulcer. As he did not know the man when he was alive, and had him 2 days after 

 his decease, he could not give an immediate account of the cause of his death. 

 But in opening his abdomen he found the epiploon adhering close to the intes- 

 tines, in such a manner that he could not part it without tearing it. It felt 

 rough and dry. And as he was going to remove the intestines, to examine the 

 mesentery, he found them so coherent with one another, that it was impossible 

 to divide them without laceration. He then inflated the intestinal tube, for the 

 inspection of this extraordinary phenomenon ; but to his great surprize, all the 

 external parts of the intestines appeared smooth , very few of the circumvolutions 

 were seen, occasioned by the strong lateral cohesions of their sides with each 

 other. The substance of the intestines was rough, and a great number of 

 pimples, as large as the head of a pin, appeared in them, and were almost free 

 from any moisture. It was proper to observe, that these pimples had been taken 

 for glands by the late Dr. J. Douglas and others ; whereas they were in reality 

 nothing else but the orifices of the exhaling vessels obstructed, and not to be met 

 with except in morbid cases. 



After having made incisions in that part of the colon next to the rectum, he 

 found the peritoneum, or external membrane which invests the intestines, and 

 the viscera of the abdomen, to be of the thickness of a sixpence ; and he fairly 

 drew all the intestines from their external membrane without separating their 

 cohesions; the peritonaeum, or external membrane, afterwards appearing like 

 another set of intestines. He found a fluid in the intestines; and he would not 

 take upon him to say, how the peristaltic motion must have been performed. 

 And aftenvards he parted the stomach from its external tunic, as he had done 

 the intestines. He found no obstruction in the mesenteric glands ; but every 

 evolution of the mesentery firmly cohered together. The liver also adhered 

 closely to the diaphragm and its adjacent parts : and in the vesicula fellis he 

 found the bile pretty thick, neither too green nor too yellow, but a tint between 

 both. He met with nothing remarkable in the other parts of the abdomen. 

 In opening the thorax he found the lungs closely adhering to the ribs laterally, 

 and posteriorly and interiorly close to the pericjirdium. In making an incision 

 to open the pericardium, he found it so closely adhering to the heart, that he 

 could not avoid wounding that organ, and with much difficulty could part it from 

 it. He met with no fluid in the pericardium. The heart was small ; and in 



