Download or read book Clinical Lectures on the Diseases of Old Age written by Jean Martin Charcot and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...extremely remarkable case of this kind. Analogous symptoms are sometimes developed, when the principal arteries of the brain are found perfectly permeable after death. We observe, first, the appearance of all the symptoms of softening which occur in their usual order of progression; but after death we can find no lesion in the vascular canals. This anomaly may be explained in two ways. Actual obstruction has occurred in vessels of a large calibre; but the clot being reabsorbed, the artery has again become permeable, while the softening consequent upon the plugging has perished. On the other hand, it may be admitted that, very small vessels being thus obstructed, a cerebral disease has developed without the existence of any obstacle in the great encephalic circulation. I have myself seen a case of this kind. The patient having first been in Trousseau's service, this eminent clinician admitted the existence of a cerebral embolism, following a valvular lesion of the heart. In this woman, who died later, in my ward, I found at the autopsy that there existed an old endocarditis with vegetations upon the mitral valve; but that no obstruction in the arteries of the base of the brain was found.' Cases of this kind may be explained upon the ground of reabsorption of the thrombus; 1Watson: Principles and Practice of Physic. Fourth edition. Vol. ii., p. 814. Tufnell: Dublin Quarterly Journal. Vol. xv., p. 371. Goodfellow: Transactions of the Medico-Chirurg. Society of London. Sesond series. Vol. xxviii. 1802. Trousseau: Clinique Mudicale de l'Hdtel-Dieu. Vol. ii., p. 587. Bouchard: Comptes Rendus de la Sociuto de Biologic, p. 111. 1S0-1. this reabsorption is sometimes complete at the time of making the autopsy; but in other cases slight vestiges of...