The blood first appeared in a single clot, and, strange to say, lumps of fleshy substance and minute pieces of bone were discharged all day. This latter discharge became more infrequent, the bone being replaced by cartilaginous substance. There was no pain, discoloration, swelling, or soreness, and after this strange anomaly disappeared menstruation regularly commenced. Van Swieten mentions a young lady who from her twelfth year at her menstrual periods had hemorrhages from pustules in the skin, the pustules disappearing in the interval.
Schmidt's Jahrbucher for 1836 gives an account of a woman who had diseased ovaries and a rectovesicovaginal fistula, and though sometimes catamenia appeared at the proper place it was generally arrested and hemorrhage appeared on the face. Chambers mentions a woman of twenty-seven who suffered from bloody sweat after the manner of the stigmatists, and Petrone mentions a young man of healthy antecedents, the sweat from whose axillae and pubes was red and very pungent. Petrone believes it was due to a chromogenic micrococcus, and relieved the patient by the use of a five per cent solution of caustic potash. Chloroform, ether, and phenol had been tried without success. Hebra mentions a young man in whom the blood spurted from the hand in a spiral jet corresponding to the direction of the duct of the sweat-gland.
Wilson refers to five cases of bloody sweat.
There is a record of a patient who once or twice a day was attacked with swelling of the scrotum, which at length acquired a deep red color and a stony hardness, at which time the blood would spring from a hundred points and flow in the finest streams until the scrotum was again empty.
Hill describes a boy of four who during the sweating stage of malaria sweated blood from the head and neck. Two months later the skin-hemorrhages ceased and the boy died, vomiting blood and with bloody stools.
Postmortem sweating is described in the Ephemerides and reported by Hasenest and Schneider. Bartholinus speaks of bloody sweat in a cadaverIn considering the anomalies of lactation we shall first discuss those of color and then the extraordinary places of secretion.
Black milk is spoken of by the Ephemerides and Paullini. Red milk has been observed by Cramer and Viger. Green milk has been observed by Lanzonius, Riverius, and Paullini. The Ephemerides also contains an account of green milk. Yellow milk has been mentioned in the Ephemerides and its cause ascribed to eating rhubarb.
It is a well-known fact that some cathartics administered to nursing mothers are taken from the breast by their infants, who, notwithstanding its indirect mode of administration, exhibit the effects of the original drug. The same is the case with some poisons, and instances of lead-poisoning and arsenic-poisoning have been seen in children who have obtained the toxic substance in the mother's milk. There is one singular case on record in which a child has been poisoned from the milk of its mother after she had been bitten by a serpent.
Paullini and the Ephemerides give instances of milk appearing in the perspiration, and there are numerous varieties of milk-metastasis recorded Dolaeus and Nuck mention the appearance of milk in the saliva. Autenreith mentions metastasis of milk through an abdominal abscess to the thigh, and Balthazaar also mentions excretion of milk from the thigh. Bourdon mentions milk from the thigh, labia, and vulva. Klein speaks of the metastasis of the milk to the lochia. Gardane speaks of metastasis to the lungs, and there is another case on record in which this phenomenon caused asphyxia. Schenck describes excretion of milk from the bladder and uterus. Jaeger in 1770 at Tubingen describes the metastasis of milk to the umbilicus, Haen to the back, and Schurig to a wound in the foot. Knackstedt has seen an abscess of the thigh which contained eight pounds of milk. Hauser gives the history of a case in which the kidneys secreted milk vicariously.
There is the history of a woman who suffered from metastasis of milk to the stomach, and who, with convulsive action of the chest and abdomen, vomited it daily. A peculiar instance of milk in a tumor is that of a Mrs. Reed, who, when pregnant with twins, developed an abdominal tumor from which 25 pounds of milk was drawn off.
There is a French report of secretion of milk in the scrotum of a man of twenty-one. The scrotum was tumefied, and to the touch gave the sensation of a human breast, and the parts were pigmented similar to an engorged breast. Analysis showed the secretion to have been true human milk.
Cases of lactation in the new-born are not infrequent.
Bartholinus, Baricelli, Muraltus, Deusingius, Rhodius, Schenck, and Schurig mention instances of it. Cardanus describes an infant of one month whose breasts were swollen and gave milk copiously.
Battersby cites a description of a male child three weeks old whose breasts were full of a fluid, analysis proving it to have been human milk; Darby, in the same journal, mentions a child of eight days whose breasts were so engorged that the nurse had to milk it. Faye gives an interesting paper in which he has collected many instances of milk in the breasts of the new-born.
Jonston details a description of lactation in an infant. Variot mentions milk-secretion in the new-born and says that it generally takes place from the eighth to the fifteenth day and not in the first week. He also adds that probably mammary abscesses in the new-born could be avoided if the milk were squeezed out of the breasts in the first days. Variot says that out of 32 children of both ***es, aged from six to nine months, all but six showed the presence of milk in the breasts. Gibb mentions copious milk-secretion in an infant, and Sworder and Menard have seen young babes with abundant milk-secretion.