A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 3 : $b Diseases of the respiratory, circulatory, and hæmatopoietic systems
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 3 : $b Diseases of the respiratory, circulatory, and hæmatopoietic systems
Medicine -- Practice
Sarcoma, fibroma, and carcinoma are infrequent causes of nasal disease.
When located in the nasal chambers they do not present any characters
with which I am familiar which distinguish them from the expressions
they assume in other parts of the body. When involving the respiratory
tract they alike create symptoms by obstruction, by excitement of the
secretions, and by the reflexes due to the involvement of the branches
of the fifth pair of nerves. When situated in the olfactory track the
obstruction to nasal respiration is absent, but the reflex symptoms are
pronounced: the patient is liable to depression of spirits and to
frontal headache. Encroachment upon the orbital, pharyngeal, and
encranial spaces is common in the last stages.
Perhaps the most common way in which these morbid growths induce
symptoms referable to the nose is by obstruction of the respiratory
tract by the incursions of a mass originating at a point beyond the
limits of the nasal chambers. In this way a growth in the pharynx may
close one or both choanæ, or protrude into the nose from the
spheni-palatine space by breaking down the ascending plate of the
palatal bone as it forms the median wall of this space; or the growth
may project inward from the superior maxilla.
In one case under my care, of obscure growth high up within the nose,
which ended fatally by involvement of the membranes of the brain, a
tenacious mucus of a dark chocolate color was withdrawn from the nose
into the throat. The peculiar color of the mucus was found to be caused
by a mixture of blood. In my judgment, this peculiar mixture of blood
and pus was significant. The blood and mucus had not been mixed in the
nasal chamber to cause the chocolate or rusty hue, for then we would
have had the appearance customary in epistaxis of bright blood and
frothy mucus mechanically held together. The even dissemination of the
blood through the mucus would point to the conclusion that the blood
had escaped in small quantity at the time of the formation of the
mucus. Why such mucus does not constantly form in inflammatory states
of the mucous membrane of the nose, as it does from the pulmonary
mucous membrane in pneumonia, I am not prepared to say. But existing as
it did in a case where a deep-seated disease was present may be
accepted as a fact in some way connected with the invasion of a morbid
growth in and upon the nasal mucous surface.
The pharynx is always in a state of hyperæmia when morbid growths of
{56} the above groups are present in the nose. The front of the velum
is apt to be covered with a great number of minute papillæ, which,
however, are often seen in anæmic individuals, and are not therefore
pathognomonic.
The treatment of the growths enumerated and the general conduct of the
cases are subjects for the general surgeon, and a consideration of them
here would be out of place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account