General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Exposed to a moist air, or left with other flesh that will not allow
it to become dry, the mucous corion putrefies with great ease; the
odour that it then sends out is very fetid. I think the reason why
the abdomen of dead bodies becomes putrid so soon is in part because
it contains substances already in putrefaction, and also because the
surfaces, in contact with these substances, and which by their vitality
resisted before their action, then readily yield to them. If these
substances were contiguous to aponeuroses, putrefaction would be much
less rapid. The mucous system when putrid takes a greyish colour; and
as the dense, subjacent cellular texture putrefies much less easily,
we can then remove from it by the least pressure, the mucous corion,
reduced to a putrid pulp, in which every trace of organization has
disappeared, and which forms a real pap.
During life, gangrene of the mucous texture takes place in general less
frequently than that of the cutaneous. The consequences of catarrh,
compared with those of erysipelas may convince us of this; there are
however cases in which death appears in this texture, whilst the
surrounding ones continue to live, as in gangrenous angina.
Exposed to maceration, the mucous texture yields to it promptly. I
think that next to the brain it is altered quickest by the action of
water. It is then reduced to a reddish pulp very different from that
from putrefaction in the open air. When we put the whole stomach to
macerate, this pulp is detached, when the sub-mucous texture and the
serous membrane have as yet undergone but little alteration.
Ebullition at first extracts from the mucous texture a greenish scum,
very different from that which the muscular and cellular textures
give when boiled. This scum which mixed with the whole fluid in the
beginning of the boiling, disturbs it and renders it green at first,
afterwards rises upon the surface where it has small bubbles of air
mixed with its substance; it often even falls to the bottom of the
vessel by its weight. Sulphuric acid changes the colour of it to a dull
brown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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