Enlarge Descriptive Card Log Book Entry
Rodin Number: 29
E Number: 124
Donor: Osler
Date: 1879
Size (H x W cm): 19.5 x 19
The specimen shows an 11 cm saccular aneurysm of the ascending aorta which has ruptured into the right pleural space (glass rod (arrow) on back view (A)).
Click on caption to enlarge image.
Comment
The clinical information given on the descriptive card indicates that this was from a 43 year-old man with syphilitic aortitis. More detailed information in the Montreal General Hospital post-mortem 567 has been lost. However, a brief summary of the case was recorded by Abbott after her meeting with Osler in Montreal in 1904:
“That fellow, now, I remember well”, [he muttered] scribbling rapidly on a card belonging to a large aneurysm of the aorta that was innocent of any trace of laminated clot, and that had ruptured into the right pleura. “It took a long while before the diagnosis was made, but he came back to the hospital with a pulsation in the second and third right interspaces. So we put him to bed and tried to cure him with Pot. Iodid. He got 120 grains a day, and the pulsation had disappeared. We were talking of discharging him in triumph, when one day he died suddenly, and we found—that.”
H. E. MacDermot: Maude Abbott: A Memoir. The MacMillan Co. Toronto. 1941. p91