Concealed accidental haemorrhage / by J. Ashburton Thompson.

  • Thompson, John Ashburton, 1848-1915.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Concealed accidental haemorrhage / by J. Ashburton Thompson. 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.

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    ticularly clear one, and I shall consider them in the order in which they are set down. For statistical cor- roboration of any assertion I may make I shall depend upon an analysis of thirty-three cases which I have made, comprising Dr. Hicks’ twenty-three, the eight others to which I have referred, my own, and one from the New York Medical Journal for 1848, upon which I fell by chance. Occasionally I shall refer to Dr. Goodell’s cases, among which the last is included. Faintness or syncope is the constant symptom of the onset of this kind of haemorrhage. It is constant because it does not depend upon the amount of blood effused. If it were a truly haemorrhagic syncope it would be absent in those cases in which the effusion was small in quantity. Case 2 is a striking example. The total effusion was no more than half a pound; yet the patient was taken with sudden syncope, rapidly became collapsed, and died quickly. Case Ho. 33 is no less remarkable; for the same sequence of events was observed, although the total effusion was only 17 oz. In Cases 25 and 26 (in both of which the patients died) the effusion was a pound and a-half and from that quan- tity to two pounds respectively. When there are re- peated effusions the patient may faint under the first, and recover for two or three davs, and then succumb to a second attack. Such are cases 13 and 25. This syncope runs on to collapse in every case, but sometimes there is no noticeable stage of mere fainting, and some- times on the other hand collapse only sets in after delivery. My own case is an example of this, and case 24 is another. A comparison of the whole number shows that in seventeen collapse supervened upon the accident at once, or set in with great rapidity ; while in