Posts tagged lungs
Top: Screening adult men for tuberculosis with radiography
Bottom: The chest of the man being screened above, clear of tuberculosis or other abscesses.
Radiography and the ‘X’ Rays in Practice and in Theory. S. R. Bottone, 1898.
Effects of influenza on the respiratory system
Left: Acute hemorrhagic and ulcerative laryngotracheitis
Right: Right lung - showing consolidation, grey hepatization (lower lobe), and congestive edema (upper lobe). There is a large hemorrhage in the center of the hepatized lobe.
Happy Flu Season!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - even if the flu is just a few days of misery for you, it’s often far more serious than you might think for many others out there. It’s worth making sure you get the vaccine every year so you don’t spread infection, and, if you do get infected, stay the hell at home.
Hepatization is the conversion of a tissue or organ to a “liver-like” substance. In the lungs, this occurs when they become engorged with effused matter, such as red blood cells, neutrophils, and fibrin, which clog up the alveoli to the point that the lungs are impervious to air, where this has occurred. Grey hepatization is the second stage in lung hepatization - at this point, the red blood cells have broken down, leaving only the fibrinogen exudate and dead tissue behind.
Laryngotracheitis is an inflammatory response in the larynx and trachea. The trachea is lined with the same epithelial cells as much of the bronchial tree, and all influenza strains are able to infect those cells. This is why, whether you have a “light” case of the flu or a deathly-serious case, coughing and throat pain still occur. When the infection is bad enough, the coughing can lead to ulceration of the tissue below the epithelium, which can lead to bleeding into the lungs, or coughing up blood.
In cases involving “consolidation”, there is generally an opportunistic pneumonia taking hold. The bacterial exotoxins and sometimes the patient’s own immune system, break down epithelial cells that separate and define the alveolar sacs. The surface area given by these epithelial layers is what allows a high volume of oxygen to be absorbed with each breath we take. When those cell layers are destroyed, the oxygenation of blood is severely decreased.
Pathology of Influenza. Charles Winternitz, Isabel Wason, and Frank McNamara, 1920.
Posterior view of arteries and veins of the heart and lungs
The coronary sinus is clearly visible, as the largest vein on the body of the heart. “Coronary” means “crown”, so if one thinks of the heart as a head, anything labeled “coronary” likely goes around it in a somewhat-encircling fashion.
The anterior cardiac veins drain directly into the right atrium, but the majority of the other cardiac veins (excluding some of the smallest), including the great cardiac vein, drain into the coronary sinus. The junction between the right atrium and the coronary sinus is marked by the Thesbian valve.
Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la medecine operatoire, par le docteur Marc Jean Bourgery. Illustration by Nicolas Henri Jacob, 1831.
*Ringring, bababyphone!*
Direct Auscultation
Auscultation /aus·cul·ta·tion/ (aws″kul-ta´shun) listening for sounds within the body, chiefly to ascertain the condition of the thoracic or abdominal viscera and to detect pregnancy; it may be performed with the unaided ear (direct or immediate) or with a stethoscope (mediate). It may not be performed with a banana.
Textbook of Pediatrics. Edited by Emil Feer, 1922.
Splanchnographie
General anatomy of the abdominothoracic region and its organs, including the female generative organs.
Anatomie Methodique, ou, Organographie Humaine. Jean-Baptiste Sarlandière, 1829.
Longitudinal Thoracic Cross-Sections, Right and Left side
As you can see here, the right lung has three lobes, and the left lung only has two. These lobes are anatomically distinct, but perform the same respiratory functions.
I know this isn’t historical, but it’s bloody cool anyhow - these days, it’s actually possible to donate one lobe of your lung while you’re still alive! I always thought of it as something that was donated only when you died, like the heart. Due to a massive deficit of cadaver lungs, the living lung transplant was developed. One lobe of your lungs is removed (leaving you with four lobes), and one lobe of another matching donor is removed, and both of those lobes are transplanted into the recipient. Though your lung doesn’t regenerate the missing lobe, the capacity of the remaining lobes will increase to the point where it doesn’t need that last one, anyhow. The survival and complication rates of transplanted live-donor lobes are comparable to receiving complete cadaver lungs.
Surgery of the Lung. C. Garre and H. Quincke, 1913.
Hand colored copper engraving, 1837
Pulmonary phthisis with cavity formation.
“Phthisis” is referring to the wasting away and necrotizing of the lung tissues affected by the tubercules. Tuberculosis was really a pretty horrible way to go…it could take decades of getting progressively worse before you finally died from it.
A Text-Book of Pathology. W. G. MacCallum, 1916.
German messenger dog in gas mask
In addition to humans, all of the animals used in WWI, including horses, pigeons, dogs, and mules, had to be outfitted with at least some degree of protection from the gas attacks going on all around them.
All animals suffered from inhalation injuries from the lung irritants, but the threat to the eyes and skin of war animals was less than in humans. Horse and mule eyes were noted to show remarkable healing power, even after vesicant (i.e. mustard gas - blister gases) contamination.
Image from US Army Chemical Corps Museum, taken by unknown Entente powers soldier in France.
Interlobar pleurisy in autopsy specimen.
Death from bronchopneumonia as a result of influenza, 1928.
Bronchopneumonia is an acute information of the bronchioles. It often progresses to lobular pneumonia, but this person died before it was able to take over the entire lung.
Someone sick in the spleen or loin, or of a lung wound, should drink wine containing bunches of black ivy berries—first three, then five, and so on up to 21, running through the odd numbers only.
-Bald’s Leechbook vol. II -ca. 850 C.E.
I imagine that much wine would cure the “sickness” and pain of a lung wound with noooo problem.
[Retrieved from Extra-Medical Elements in Anglo-Saxon Medicine, by Audrey L. Meaney, in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 24 No. 1.]
Right lung with surface hemorrhages
Lung moderately enlarged due to influenza. Note the consolidation of infectious activity in the blue area.
The Pathology of Influenza. M. C. Winternitz, Isabel M. Wason, and Frank P. McNamara, 1920.
Early Bronchiolar Lesion in Fatal Influenza
You can see the mucus in the lumen (that open area in the middle), preventing air exchange. There is also inflammation present.
The Pathology of Influenza. M. C. Winternitz, Isabel M. Wason, and Frank P. McNamara, 1920.
Lungs from Autopsy - Cause of Death: Pulmonary Embolism
You can see the massive thrombus in the main artery of the lung, which led to a sudden death with no preceding symptoms.
Most pulmonary embolisms are caused by blood clots in the deep veins of the legs, but can sometimes be caused by introduction of air into the blood stream, embolization of fat, or amniotic fluid.
The Pathology of Influenza. M. C. Winternitz, Isabel Wason, and Frank McNamara, 1920.
“A sure remedy for worms!”
Gross Things About Hookworms:
When Ancylostoma duodenal larvae are “filariform” (in the non-feeding infectious stage), they travel through the lungs. Aaannd…well, you DO cough them up when they’re in there. Sometimes you cough them out of your system, sometimes you cough them into your mouth and swallow them.
When you swallow the worms you cough up, they get back into the intestines, where they want to be. When you cough them onto the ground, they can immediately infect others. See, when one defecates the worms, the eggs get ejected from the body. Those then have to hatch, so that the A. duodenal can reach its filariform stage (which takes several days), and burrow into the skin of another host (or perhaps the same host!). When they’re coughed up at the stage that they need to be at to infect others, they can just dig right in to their new home…
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A blog for all biological and medical ephemera, from the age of Abraham through the era of medical quackery and cure-all nostrums. Featuring illustrations, history, and totally useless trivia from the diverse realms of nature and medicine.
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