Papers on hypertrophy of the prostate muscle / by Reginald Harrison.

  • Harrison, Reginald, 1837-1908.
Date:
[1886]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on hypertrophy of the prostate muscle / by Reginald Harrison. 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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    floor of the prostate which was really due, not to the develop- ment of more prostate tissue, but to the bending back of the posterior wall of the bladder. When it is considered that the prostate is almost immovably fixed by ligament in its position, whilst the bladder can rise or fall according to circumstances, it is not difficult to understond how this can be, and how an obstacle may be put in the way of micturi- tion which does not necessarily involve an increase in the amount of prostatic tissue. This mode of forming a prostatic bar may be very readily imitated. That an undue sinking of the bladder within the pelvis such as I have referred to would be likely to induce hypertrophy of the prostate as a compensating process seems to me to be not unreasonable. It is stated by Sir Henry Thompson* that actual hypertrophy of the pros- tate exists in about 84 per cent, of men at and above sixty years of age; that it produces manifest symptoms in about 15 or 16 per cent. From this it would appear that 18 per cent, are not injuriously affected by this change, a circumstance which almost seems to suggest that the majority of persons with large prostates are in some way or other benefited by them. These are illustrations where the compensation is precise. How frequently it happens in our daily practice that we come across instances of persons having very large prostates, but who are not conscious of suffering any inconvenience thereby. It is only very recently, when examining the rectum of a patient, I discovered that he had an enormous prostate, but beyond experiencing some degree of vesical irritability a few years ago he had now nothing to complain of so far as micturition was concerned. A good idea of the amount of support that is afforded to the most dependent portion of the bladder by a large prostate may be * Diseases of the Prostate.