On ovarian dropsy : with cases of ovariotomy / by Thomas Keith.

  • Thomas Keith
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On ovarian dropsy : with cases of ovariotomy / by Thomas Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    On going out to remove the tumour, the week after she was first seen, he found her labouring under slight pleuritic effusion, and not in a condition in which to risk the operation. Thinking to relieve her breathing, the largest cyst was tapped. Inflammation of the cyst came on, followed by the most intense peritonitis I ever saw, and she died four or five days afterwards. Soon after this, when I hated the very name of ovarian dropsy, and was almost inclined to accept the well-known dictum of Dr William Hunter, that the patient will have the best chance of living longest under ovarian dropsy who does the least to get rid of it, I was asked to see Mrs R., aged forty-nine, who, after long battling with her disease, had taken to bed, with little prospect of again leaving it. The tumour was a large multilocular, of rapid growth, filling up the whole abdomen, and fast breaking up her health ; and when this woman, finding herself dying of her disease, placed herself entirely in my hands, confiding in my honour, asking me to do whatever I could and whatever I chose to save her life, warned by the results of these preceding cases, and by my former experience of this disease, I did not dare to recommend to her any other treatment than the radical cure. But, on going to her house, a few days afterwards, to see to some necessary arrangements, she too was found to be affected with pleurisy. In her case, however, it yielded to remedies, and on the 18tli of September 1862, I re¬ moved a multilocular tumour, weighing 25 lbs., besides nearly as much ascitic fluid. She was at the head of her family in the course of a month, and is now in perfect health. The next case that occurred was that of Mrs S., aged fifty-five, recommended to me by Dr Thomson of Dalkeith. The case was one urgently demanding relief, for the life of the patient was seriously threatened by the disease. The tumour, which was a large multilocular, weighing 45 lbs., was removed on the 7th of January last. The operation was a very severe one, from the extensive and intimate nature of the adhesions to the abdominal wall, bowel, omentum, and mesentery, and extended over two hours. She recovered without a bad symptom, and without the discharge of a drop of matter from the wound; and when I saw her a few weeks ago, it was difficult to recognise in the healthy looking, happy face before me, the haggard emaciated patient of six months before. The third case died suddenly from exhaustion the day after the operation, on being raised in bed. The' prognosis, in this case, had been most unfavourable, for the large multilocular tumour, weighing 63 lbs., had so displaced the heart that its apex was beating against the third rib. I wished to have operated on this case eight months before, when the health of the patient was pretty good, or at least only beginning to give way, and the tumour was half the size it afterwards attained. She was, however, at that time taken out of my hands and tapped, and when she was again placed under my care, by Professor Simpson, eight months afterwards, her emaciation was
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