A case of ovariotomy in a child : with remarks / by Thomas Bryant.

  • Bryant, Thomas, 1828-1914.
Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of ovariotomy in a child : with remarks / by Thomas Bryant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    On September 10th the patient left the hospital well, wearing an abdominal belt. Examination of the tumour .— The tumour weighed about four pounds, it was compound, many of the cysts being large. One or two of them had been tapped at the time of operation, and of the remaining cysts four or five contained from half a pint to a pint of fluid each. The character of the fluid in the different cysts was most varied. In some it was of the so-called linseed-tea appearance; in others it was much darker, while in some it was clear and so thin as to resemble the fluid from an hydatid. The walls of the parent cyst were thick and coriaceous; they were highly vascular, their inner surface being minutely injected. Remarks.—This case is worthy of record for several reasons. The fact that it occurred in a child with no physical signs of puberty about her is a point of special interest, for the disease clearly began and ran its course in an infantile organ before the ovaries had commenced their active life. It is true that ovarian cysts are occasionally found in the young, for, in the museum at Prague, there is a rare preparation of a cyst formation in the ovary of a child only one year old ; and Kiwisch has related a case in which ovarian disease appeared at fourteen years of age. I have also recorded in my work on f Ovariotomy’ two examples in which girls, aged respectively fifteen and six- teen, sank after tapping from suppuration of ovarian cysts; but for a disease to have commenced and developed to such an extent as in the case just related is a point of unusual interest, and I am not aware of any other instance of a like kind having been recorded. The character of the tumour is another point also worthy of remark; for it was more like the chronic ovarian tumour we find in the middle-aged than any of an acute kind. The thick and almost cartilaginous nature of the parent cyst-wall was very remarkable, for the tumour had apparently been only of six months’ growth, yet it resembled more the thickened tunica vaginalis of an old hydrocele than any other formation with which 1 am acquainted. It certainly was very unlike the more rapidly growing ovarian tumours found in the middle- aged, although it approached somewhat in character the chronic