Observations on the statement made by Dr. Douglass, of Cheselden's improved lateral operation of lithotomy; in a letter to Sir Astley Cooper ... / by John Yelloly.

Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the statement made by Dr. Douglass, of Cheselden's improved lateral operation of lithotomy; in a letter to Sir Astley Cooper ... / by John Yelloly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    The improved lateral operation of lithotomy was devised by Cheselden, after he gave up the high operation, in consequence, as it appears, of the hints afforded to him by the operations of Frere Jacques, and Rau ; and he made two attempts at improvement, before he fixed upon the mode of operating which he permanently adopted. The first, he tells us, was by filling the bladder with water through a catheter, and then making an in- cision on the outside of the catheter into the bladder, in the same place as on the gripe ; the second, by trying to cut into the bladder, in the same manner that Mr. Rau was commonly re- ported to do. Being disappointed in the expectations which he had formed of the success of both these plans of proceeding, he next contrived what may be regarded as his third and last operation, *' the manner of cutting, (to use his own words) which is now called the lateral way. This operation, says he, I do in the following manner : I tie the patient as for the greater apparatus, but lay him upon a blanket several doubles, upon an horizontal table three feet high, with his head only raised. I first make as long an incision as 1 can, beo'innino- near the place where the old operation ends, and cutting down between the musculus accelerator urinas, and erector penis, and by the side of the in- testinum rectum ; I then feel for the staff, holding down the gut all the while with one or two fingers