GLANDULAR ABSCESSES. 
215 
On opening the chest, a considerable quantity of thick serous 
liquid flowed out, on which were floating large fibrino-albuminous 
flakes of a whitish yellow, soft, easily torn, and presenting no 
remaining traces of organization. Similar matter, but of longer 
formation, although still recent, was found upon the costal and pul- 
monary pleurae ; it had contracted an adherence, easily destroyed, 
but still of sufficient firmness to attach the lungs to the bottom of 
the thoracic cavity, and prevent them from floating in the fluid 
which filled the cavity. 
Underneath these adventitious productions the serous membrane 
was strongly injected, and in some parts presented brown patches 
of greater or less size, actual ecchymosis, arising also from excess 
of inflammation. It was on the anterior mediastinum chiefly that 
the pleural inflammation appeared to have been most acute. This 
mediastinum caused a projection on that side on which an open- 
ing had been made into the thorax ; so that one would almost have 
been led to believe that it yielded to the pressure from below up- 
wards exercised by the fluid contained in the other part of the 
chest ; but an incision of the bistoury into this prominence soon 
shewed that it was created by an enormous abscess which had be- 
come developed between the folds of the anterior mediastinum 
itself. The fluid which flowed from it was similar in nature and 
appearance to that contained in the abscess of which we have 
already spoken. 
On attentively examining the interior of this fresh abscess, it 
was discovered that it communicated with the abscesses situated 
on the exterior of the chest by means of a very small sinus which 
passed along the internal surface of the first right side, and went to 
the glands thereabouts. Here the surrounding glands were found 
to be for the most part inflamed and softened, some of them being 
completely isolated from the neighbouring parts, and floating in 
pus. 
The tissue of the lungs presented no pathological alteration, ex- 
cepting that at its lower portion, on each side, their substance was 
condensed, of a reddish-brown hue, and without infiltration of the 
cellular partitions between the lobes. There can be no doubt but 
that this phenomenon was the result of prolonged emersion of this 
portion of the lobes in the pleural fluid. We have frequently had 
occasion to examine animals that have died of acute pleuritis, and 
have been enabled to study the difference which exists between 
the pulmonary tissue when thus condensed and that which has 
been acted upon by inflammation, and it is impossible to confound 
the two. 
Recueil de Medtcine Veter inair e t June 1846. 
