Practical observations on diseases of the lower bowel : including piles, hemorrhoidal fluxes, prolapsus, fistulae, cancer, polypi, fissure, spasmodic sphincter, and anal eruptions, with cases on the mode of cure without operation / by Andrew Paul.

  • Paul, Andrew.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on diseases of the lower bowel : including piles, hemorrhoidal fluxes, prolapsus, fistulae, cancer, polypi, fissure, spasmodic sphincter, and anal eruptions, with cases on the mode of cure without operation / by Andrew Paul. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    man of forty or fifty, he soon looks sixty or seventy ; his hair turns gray: his spirits become wretchedly depressed ; he dreads each succeeding visit to the water-closet, yet he knows he must go ; his appetite fails him, he picks his food; nothing is relished ; yet it has been stated, on the highest authority, that during repeated Hemorrhages the appetite becomes ravenous. This I have never known to be the case. The patient at times has spasm of the eyeballs, and shooting pains through the temples. He constantly thinks of his infirmity ; he broods over his sufferings by day, they haunt him during his broken slumbers by night; 'he will all but entreat of his attendant to put an end to him, as life is insupportable. The depletions continue, the whole system becomes deranged, and the sufferer flies from one medical man to another. Nowhere can he find, relief: as his pain and debility increase, so his want of confidence and. hope of ultimate cure decreases ; he becomes irritable and nervous, and his existence one of misery to himself and painfully afflicting to those around him. Such is an imperfect outline, though not an overdrawn picture, of his sufferings. He is recommended operation ; this is performed once, twice,—nay, as many as six, ten, or even fourteen times. An Honourable Baronet, taking up his pen, wrote me the number of times he had been cut and sewed, and the dates of the operations, during an interval of twelve years, with as much accuracy as if they had been the events but of yesterday. The disease thus treated has returned in a more aggravated form. The late Mr. Mackenzie gives his owg case, as follows : It is now thirteen years since I was first attacked with excessive itching at the orifice of the Rectum, which was followed by Piles, Hemorrhage, and, finally, by Prolapsus Recti, or falling of the Rectum. In the different stages of these diseases, I advised with many of the Faculty, both in the country, on the continent, and in London ; but although endless experiments were made and quackery resorted to; the relief I obtained proved only of a temporary nature; and in defiance of all my endeavours, the Prolapsus, or internal membrane of the Rectum, and the powerful vessels charged with blood, protruded daily through the Sphincters at the time of evacuation, and thus became almost strangulated by the contraction of the muscle, until at last I found con- siderable difficulty in returning it; thus was existence rendered incessant in bodily pain and mental anxiety. Copious depletions began to take place after evacuation, and