On the pathology, symptoms, and treatment of ulcer of the stomach : with an appendix of cases / by William Brinton.

  • Brinton, William, 1823-1867.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology, symptoms, and treatment of ulcer of the stomach : with an appendix of cases / by William Brinton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    trace of the pulsation alluded to. No gastric uneasiness or diarrhoea since last report. [December, 1856.—Remains in the same state.] Remarks.—Although the symptoms of this case seem somewhat less acute than they often are, still they offer no essential distinction from those seen in younger subjects of the same malady. It may, at first sight, appear strange that the constitution of a person of the age of seventy should have been able to bear up against such protracted and con- stant vomiting. But the frequency of this act is by no means always in exact proportion to its completeness. In other words, even where vomiting follows almost every meal that is taken, it often ceases as soon as it has relieved the stomach of a part of its contents: a fact which sufficiently indicates the importance of limiting the quantity of food taken by the patient at any one time to something less than will give rise to this unnatural and fatiguing act. There seemed no sufficient grounds for any conjecture as * to the exact seat of the ulcer in the stomach. The situation of the dorsal pain appeared rather to indicate that the lesion occupied that part of the organ which lies to the left of the spinal column. The extreme uneasiness and pain that at- tended the decubitus on this side pointed to the same con- jecture. But such an effect of this posture is so frequent, while the ulcer of the cardiac pouch is so rare (less than* two per cent, of these lesions), that one can scarcely avoid be- lieving that the mere dragging of the dependent cardiac pouch in this posture, or the weight of the liver above it, can aggra- vate the pain of an ulcer in the lesser curvature (the com- monest site of the lesion). The ulcer of the cardiac pouch, too, appears to be often associated with an extension of the epigastric pain into the left hypochondrium:—an extension of which no trace could be verified in this instance. Hence the only conjecture that offered itself referred the ulcer to