A treatise on obstructed and inflamed hernia : and on mechanical obstructions of the bowels internally, and also an appendix, containing a brief statement of the cause of difference in size in the male and female bladder / by Henry Stephens.

Date:: 1829

Credit: A treatise on obstructed and inflamed hernia : and on mechanical obstructions of the bowels internally, and also an appendix, containing a brief statement of the cause of difference in size in the male and female bladder / by Henry Stephens. 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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$218 domen, and a.peculiar spring pad C^^J^ which is attach- ed to tlie gu-tby a button j there are other buttons/cc^, which allow of the pads being shifted; a strap {a a) passes between the thighs, and is attached to a button behind. The advantages of tliis Truss, consist in the support which the girth gives tO the intestines in the abdomen, and the facility with which the pad may be fitted over the opening, where the hernia protnides> by having ad- ditional buttons ; also in its cheapness. When I first gave these Trusses to my patients, J found them, almost invariably objecting to take tliem, lu'ging it as their opinion, that they would not answer ; - and stating, that they would rather take one hke their old ones, (the common spring Trusses,) I begged of them to give them a trial, adding, that if they did not answer as well as the others, I would exchange them. I never had any apphcation for an exchange, and whenever these persons applied for another truss, the last being worn out, I found them always requesting to have this sort, as they stated they covild perform their daily labour* so much better with them than with the former ones. A medical fi-iend in the country, to whose notice I in- ti'oduced these Trusses, informs me that he has'recom- mended them to his patients ever since, and has never heard of any complaint of their inefficiency, but on the contrary, finds that his patients give them a decided pre- ference to all others they had been in the habit of using. In the fonner edition of this work, T printed an Appen- dix, containing a con-ection of a physiological eiTor, rela- * These patients were chiefly the paupers of a parish I attended in the country, and were consequently labourers, and of course, the best kind of persons on whom to determine the efficiency of the contrivance.$