Intestinal obstruction with an appendix on the action of remedies / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Abdominal hernia by Rushton Parker.

  • Thomas, Hugh Owen, 1834-1891.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Intestinal obstruction with an appendix on the action of remedies / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Abdominal hernia by Rushton Parker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    question, and comes to the conclusion that aperients ought to be set aside. At page 333, he says:— I have never yet met with an instance in which this treatment has been of service ; nor have I met with one in which the aperients did not do positive harm, Sydenham, Brinton, and Inman are the only practi- tioners of medicine, of whom we have any record up to this date*, who have emphatically protested against the prevailing use of purgatives in intestinal obstructions. My experience has taught me that their protest against the employ- ment of purgatives requires renewing and extending to the point of insisting on the total omission of purgatives in the treatment of all classes and degrees of obstruction. The pathology of this disease has been well elucidated, and from the information we have acquired, few gentle- men would be found so wanting in judgment as to give purgatives when obstruction of the second class was known to exist,—intussusception excepted. The question arises then— On what grounds is the evil practice of giving aperients in any case in this disease based ? In my opinion the answer is, that this injurious treatment is perpetuated from the adoption generally of a purely mechanical classification of intestinal lesions, a division into two classes—lesions with patency of the canal, and those with total occlusion. The first division includes those cases in • 1882.