Surgical lectures, delivered in the theatre of the Westminster Hospital / by Richard Davy.

  • Davy, R. L.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical lectures, delivered in the theatre of the Westminster Hospital / by Richard Davy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    free end, and at the other diminish in calibre, and become con- tinuous with the shaft, which has a uniform diameter of | of an inch. I here take the opportunity of saying a few words in grate- ful acknowledgment of the efficacious manner in which the lever was handled in this case by Mr. William Thomson, for my colleague Dr. Barton, who was at the time recovering from lumbago, and incapable of the stooping posture essential for its proper working. The rectum being empty, two ounces of linseed-oil were thrown into it. One end of the lever having been oiled also, ]Mr. Thomson carefully, with a rotatory motion, passed it through the anus and up the rectum, until it was felt above the brim of the true pelvis by pressing the abdominal wall. An Es- march's bandage, which had been previously applied to the whole limb and around the pelvis, to save for the child as much as possible of the blood that had circulated in the limb was removed. Mr. Thomson, at the commencement of its unrolling, brought forward the protruding end of the lever, making a ful- crum of the perineum, thereby throwing the other end backward and compressing the common iliac artery in the groove between the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae and the psoas magnus muscle. Pulsation at once ceased in the femoral artery, and the opera- tion was then commenced and soon completed. So effectual was the control of the iliac artery that at the very utmost not more than two ounces of blood were lost. Indeed, it is probable that when the operation was finished the child, thanks to the elastic bandage also, had more blood than she possessed before it. It is a source of great satisfaction to me to be able to re- port that, with the exception of some vomiting the day after the operation, seemingly caused by absorption of carbolic acid, the urine being then dark olive-brown, nearly black, from the presence of the drug (exhibits specimen), she has not had a symptom to excite alarm for her safety. The iuine was tested by our Assistant Physician, Dr. Walter Smith, who reported to me that, although free from blood and albumen, there was no doubt of the presence of carbolic acid. Those who believe in the deleterious influence of bacteria on the system after opera- tions might argue with much plausibility that the circulation