The past and present treatment of intestinal obstructions : reviewed, with an improved treatment indicated / by Hugh Owen Thomas.

  • Thomas, Hugh Owen, 1834-1891.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The past and present treatment of intestinal obstructions : reviewed, with an improved treatment indicated / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    paralysis of the musular fibres of the bowel from contiguous inflammation, occurring in the condition of peritonitis, enteritis, or after herniae reduction, or operation. Paralysis may also arise from over dis- tension, from compression during and previous to reduction of, or after operation for herniae, invagina- tion, rents in messentery, twisting of the gut, stric- ture, and malignant growths. It has too frequently hitherto been thought that obstruction arising from herniae is practically on a safe way to resolution after reduction or operation, when in my opinion the reduction or operation frequently only places the patient in a condition fit for rational therapeutic treatment, and he should be treated by the opium method, and dieted as strictly after reduction or operation as though it were the first day of any of the varieties of obstruction before enumerated. Some writers mention spasm as present in enteritis and lead colic, &c., and a cause of obstruc- tion in some cases. My own conviction is, that spasm is never a cause of obstruction, and if its occurrence is granted, its presence in enteritis is impossible, as the inflammation would temporarily suspend muscular action. Our knowledge of the etiology of lead colic, does not as yet justify any one in asserting or denying the occurrence of spasm in this condition. Tobacco has usually been judged