On Addison's disease : being the Croonian lectures for 1875 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians ; revised and illustrated by plates and reports of cases / by Edward Headlam Greenhow.

Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On Addison's disease : being the Croonian lectures for 1875 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians ; revised and illustrated by plates and reports of cases / by Edward Headlam Greenhow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    composition of the blood does not undergo any important alteration in imcomplicated cases of Addison’s disease. In all my later cases the blood has been examined microscopically, •with virtually negative results. In one -woman, who was anasmic, and had never been robust since an attack of scar- latinal dropsy seven years before her last illness, the white corpuscles were slightly in excess; but, in all other respects, the blood appeared perfectly normal, the red corpuscles being abundant, and forming rouleaux in the usual manner. In another of my patients, who had been in the hospital pre- viously, and was readmitted on account of the extreme pros- tration following loss of blood from a slight wound on the forehead, the blood, when first examined, was not exactly normal. There was no marked excess or diminution of white corpuscles ; but there was a deficiency of red corpuscles, and those present did not form into rouleaux, but were scattered singly over the field. There was also a large number of globular highly refractive nuclei, of a red colour, measuring on an average 43^0 diameter, mostly lying isolated, but here and there aggregated in groups. At the end of three weeks, however, when the patient had recovered her strength, the abnormal conditions of the blood had disappeared, and their temporary existence could not well be a specific result of Addison’s disease, seeing that precisely the same appearances were found, though to a less marked extent, in the blood of two other patients who were in the hospital at the same time, one of whom was suffering from constitutional syphilis; and the other from simple debility and anaemia. Since the delivery of my last lecture the courtesy of Dr. Bristowe has given me another oppor- tunity of examining the condition of the blood in a well- marked case of Addison’s disease.' The patient, a woman aged forty-eight, who is at present under his care in St. ‘ See Appendix A, p. 131, Case x. G