The question of interfering with the abscesses of hip disease / by A.B. Judson.

  • Judson, Adoniram Brown, 1837-1916.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The question of interfering with the abscesses of hip disease / by A.B. Judson. 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.

    6/10 (page 4)
    free from abscesses have collections of pus limited in quan- tity and deep in situation which remain quiet and finally disappear without impeding the progress of the case toward recovery. We may, perhaps, look for the reason of this diversity in the individual diathesis rather than in the local peculiarities or accidents of a given case. Very few, however, of the abscesses of hip disease will thus conveniently disappear, and the question of what to do with them is one of every-day orthopaedic practice, and very properly a question for consideration by the members of this section. Although each case as it occurs must be judged by itself, it will be well to recall a few considerations applicable to all cases of the kind. It will, for instance, be generally admitted that in a purulent ease of hip disease the abscesses and sinuses are secondary in importance to the condition of the diseased bone from which they spring. They can hardly be considered as adding to the gravity of the case, because destruction of the soft tissues is less serious from every point of view than destruction of the osseous tissue. It is difficult also to see how a purulent sinus can prolong the duration of a case, because its natural tendency is toward cicatrization, an event which is delayed only by the obstinacy of the bone disease. It is also very doubtful, in my opinion, whether abscesses and sinuses hold the relation of cause and effect to visceral degeneration. In the cases of visceral complication which I have seen I have had no reason to question that the disease of the abdomi- nal and thoracic organs has been an expression of a morbid constitution of which the pernicious course of the joint dis- ease is but another expression. Neither will it do to say that the presence of pus forbids the repair of carious bone when cases occur in which recovery is accompanied by the disappearance of abscesses by absorption, and many others in which recovery from the local affection and the resto-