On the local application of a benumbing or congealing temperature, in inflammatory, painful, & malignant diseases / by James Arnott, M.D.

  • Arnott, James, 1794-1885.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the local application of a benumbing or congealing temperature, in inflammatory, painful, & malignant diseases / by James Arnott, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    however, this proceeding were deemed too complex and tedious, rapid but not sudden distension, under etherisation (which was unknown when fluid pressure was first proposed) may be substituted for it, as the passage may thus be opened with safety to a much greater extent than that executed by the means at present in use. It may be said that dilatation can only be made to a cer- tain limited extent, and that the finger will produce it to this extent as well as, and more conveniently than, complex means. If so, it necessarily follows that what has been called the further dilatation by the forceps grasping the stone, and which is required in almost every case, capnot really be dilatation, but must be rupture or laceration; and it can hardly be doubted that laceration is an accompani- ment both of rude attempts at dilatation, and of slight in- cision of the prostate in lithotomy. But if laceration fre- quently attends these processes, it would surely be safer to rupture or lacerate the part by an instrument which does not, like the forceps grasping the stone, at the same time contuse and abrade. Rupture is so much dreaded, because to it has been ascribed all the mischief caused by these addi- tional sources of inflammation; but were it produced by an instrument acting equally and eccentrically, it would, I am persuaded, be less dangerous than incision as this is often performed. The tight resisting part would alone be severed; the looser textures enclosing the blood-vessels, and amongst which when cut the urine lodges, would, as when a blunt knife is used, be only stretched or pushed aside. Was the opera- tion by the apparatus major (unquestionably a combina- tion of rupture, bruising, and abrasion) more fatal than lithotomy on the adult as represented by Sir Benjamin Brodie, and as proved by Mr. Hutchinson's statistics in the Medical Times and Gazette? Much of the mortality re-