An address on the medical history of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pepys : Read before the Abernethian Society on March 6th, 1895 / by D'Arcy Power, M.B. Oxon, F.R.C.S. Eng., surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Children.
- D'Arcy Power
- Date:
- [1895]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An address on the medical history of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pepys : Read before the Abernethian Society on March 6th, 1895 / by D'Arcy Power, M.B. Oxon, F.R.C.S. Eng., surgeon to the Victoria Hospital for Children. Source: Wellcome Collection.
8/18 page 8
![the operation was performed after the manner which he describes and with such instruments as are there recom¬ mended. Par6 says that, after the wound has been made laterally in the perineum and of the bigness of one’s thumb, “some one of the silver instruments called by the name of guiders are thrust into the wound as the probe [i.e., the staff] Is withdrawn from the bladder. The guiders are then to bee thrust and turned up and down in the bladder, and are at length to be staied there by putting in the pin. Then must they be held betwixt the surgeon’s fingers. It will also be necessary for the surgeon to put another instru¬ ment called the ducks-bill between the two guiders into the capacity of the bladder ; hee must thrust it in somewhat violently, and dilate it so thrust in with both his hands, turneing it everie way to enlarge the wound as much as shall be sufficient for the admitting the other instruments which are to bee put into the bladder : yet it is far better for the patient, if that the wound may with this one instrument bee sufficiently dilated, and the stone pulled forth with the same, without the help of anie other.” Pepys was sterile, and no doubt exists in my mind that his sterility was due to the left ejaculator having been divided at the time of the operation, whilst the right one was so much bruised by the system of dilatation then employed that it afterwards became occluded. Le Dran states definitely that injury was often done to seminal ducts in the old operation by the apparatus major, and although in a properly directed lateral incision the deep wound is external to the prostatic portion of the ejaculatory duct, Teevan2 records four instances in which after lateral lithotomy there was no emission during sexual intercourse. It is certain that Pepys suffered some permanent injury from his opera¬ tion, for he had repeated attacks of pain and swelling in his testes, which were independent of the referred pain already described. His testes remained functional for many years, and his prostatic secretion was always sufficiently abundant to prevent him suffering from any lack of emission. The local pain in his testes usually occurred, upon his own confession, when his sexual feelings had been unduly excited, so that it appears clear that the pain was associated with the functional activity of these organs. The mere act of getting drunk he takes but little account of, and it was an event of no infrequent occurrence in the earlier 2 Transactions of the Clinical Society, vol. vii., 1874, pp. 179-180.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30799193_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
