MELANOSIS AND OSSIFICATION. 
385 
, 1 visited her again at the end of this period, and'found ulceration 
had commenced in the tumour; or, in the words of the man, “ it 
had burst, and discharged a large quantity of dark-coloured matter.” 
It. kept increasing and discharging an offensive dark fluid occa- 
sionally from this time to the end of May, when I visited her again. 
The emaciation is now considerable ; she moves with great diffi- 
culty ; suffers much pain : the stench from the tumour is insuffer- 
able. As she is now useless on the farm, I suggested to the pro- 
prietors the humanity of at once destroying her, to which proposal 
they assented. She was accordingly shot on the 4th of this month. 
Having mentioned this case to Mr. Gloag, 11th Hussars, he went 
with me to see it while living, and, considering it one of great in- 
terest, he expressed a wish to be present at the post-mortem exa- 
mination, and was a witness of the following morbid phenomena :< — 
Autopsy. 
The Tumour , when I arrived, had been removed from its situ- 
ation, as had also the abdominal viscera; it weighed more than 
twelve pounds, having two largish superficial ulcerations on its in- 
ferior surface, with an intervening firm structure. It presented no 
appearance externally to indicate its melanotic character, but on 
cutting into it its composition was evinced, it being composed of 
jet-coloured lobulated deposits, varying in size and figure, and 
staining the knife like brownish black paint, intersected throughout 
by dense cellular adipose and fibrous tissue, having such an ap- 
pearance as would be produced by thrusting black globular and 
oval bodies of different sizes, from a walnut to a hen’s egg, into & 
suet-like substance ; some of this black deposit being encysted and 
distinct, whilst other portions were formed into irregular conglome- 
rate masses. 
I was then shewn another body about the size and form of a 
pigeon’s egg, which was found floating amongst the intestines, and 
was the first thing that attracted the attention of the slaughterer : 
it was dense and firm, having a perfectly smooth surface of the 
colour and apparent structure of the peritoneal coat of the intestine, 
without the least appearance of ever having had a peduncle or 
attachment of any kind. Upon making a section of this body, I 
found the cyst of about the thickness of, and as firm and as like in 
texture, the coats of the small intestines as possible : it contained a 
sebaceous matter somewhat like the meconium in colour, but not 
quite so yellow. This body was once doubtlessly adherent to some 
part of the peritoneum, and was most likely detached from the 
viscera by the combined influence of its own gravity and the pe- 
ristaltic action of the bowels. The friction its surface had been 
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