The modern treatment of diseases of the liver / by Prof. Dujardin-Beaumetz ; translated from the fifth French edition by E.P. Hurd.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modern treatment of diseases of the liver / by Prof. Dujardin-Beaumetz ; translated from the fifth French edition by E.P. Hurd. 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.

    194/204 (page 180)
    Do not forget, moreover, after each dressing to withdraw the sound which you have introduced by the opening. Often the orifice of the sound is clogged by the cyst membranes, which easily obliterate the bore of the tube, and if you withdraw the canula, you see a gush of putrid matters issuing by your fistulous opening. The sac retracts little by little, and you find your- selves able to get less and less of liquid into it by your syringe; you take a smaller tube, and after a while no more liquid can be made to enter. You take out the tube, and the patient is cured. Recovery is not always the rule. Often the patient succumbs to the suppura- tion, or, as in a case that I saw with Dr. Herard, when in a lobe of the liver one sac has disappeared, an- other develops in another lobe. But whatever may happen, you should do everything, try everything— when once the cyst has been opened—to avoid the causes of septicaemia, and to support the strength of the patient by an appropriate treatment. As you see, the treatment of hydatid cysts of the liver demands surgical knowledge and skill. But it be- longs to you, as practitioners of medicine,to be ready for the emergency and to employ the needed surgical means, and no less responsibility belongs to the after- care of the case, which demands constant watchfulness and attention, so that it may be said that the treatment of this affection is as much the province of the physi- cian as of the surgeon.