Rectal stricture of puerperal origin, relieved by laparotomy / by N. Stone Scott.

  • Scott, N. Stone.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rectal stricture of puerperal origin, relieved by laparotomy / by N. Stone Scott. 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.

    6/12 (page 2)
    woMuin, has always enjoyed o'ood liealtli until her last conlinenient. She Hrst inenstruated at seventeen years; her periods have been re'.ndar in time and (juantity, and accomplished without diilicuitv. She has given birth to four children; one ten years since, one six, the third three years ago, and one in April, 181)2. All the labors were easy and convalescence normal except the last. The first ahild died at the age of seventeen months of diphtheria; the last one lived but twelve days; the other two are healthy. No trace of sy[)hilis or gonorrhoea in husband or wife. On the second day after confinement she complained of severe pain in the lower part of the abdomen, and on the eighth day a rectal tenesmus super- vened, there being frequent passages of mucous streaked with blood. This continued some two months: gradually the acute pain and bloody discharge subsided, but she did not regain her former good health. Her doctor told her that she had grippe of the bowels.” No vaginal examination was made. In July she consulted one of onr leading gynaecologists, who put her to bed, gave her hot douches, and said to her, “You will have to stay in bed until the snow flies.” For two and a half months she had no symptoms directly referable to the rectum, but after the latter part of August the difficulty she experienced in getting her bowels to move gradually increased in severity. On the twenty-fifth of last October my father first saw the patient; at this time she was having a chill every day or every other day, with a temperature from 100^’ to IGF' F. The next week 1 saw her, she was then in a deplorable condition; her entire trouble was referred by herself to the difficulty in getting a passage, which she dreaded on account of the pain, she described as “some- thing terrible,” forcing her to bear down as if she were “going to have a baby.” A movement was only secured by the re]>eated administration of large doses of powerful cathartic, and was accom- panied by a distressing, burning sensation in the rectum, which cotdd not be relieved. TTie anus, she said, would at these tijnes “draw up toward the inside, ’ while the passage was “very small like a baby’s.” Her other symptoms were accompanied by a persistent