On ovariotomy / by J. Marion Sims.

  • J. Marion Sims
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On ovariotomy / by J. Marion Sims. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    in a larger quantity than an ounce without producing some pain, and it would be thrown out in a jet, thus indicating that it was injected into a closed pouch, and not into the free cav- ity of the peritonaeum. This I did not understand at the time, hut it was made clear in the fourth case. In my second case (the uterine cyst) there were two punctures made into the peritoneal cavity through the vaginal cul-de-sac, one passing also into the bot- tom of the uterine cyst behind the uterus. They were both made at the lowest point of the Douglas cul-de-sac. One tube shpped out, and I was not able to replace it. I did not use the caoutchouc elastic tube. I thought it would be enough to in- troduce a short tube of some hard substance that would be self-retaining. Accordingly, I had some tubes made of hard rubber about the shape of the cock's spur, and about two and a half inches long. The diagram represents the tube nearly of actual size and shape. It had three openings on each side. Fig. 4. The case reported shows that this contrivance was a failure, and that I was obliged to resort to the long Chassaignac drainage-tube. My third drainage case was operated on only a few days after the second, and I was not then convinced of the utter uselessness of the above contrivance. In this case the cock-spur drainage-tube was used, and proved of no value whatever, for its fenestras were obstructed by the lateral press- ure of the parts in contact with it. When it was removed, about twelve hours before the death of the patient, a pint of reddish serum, more or less, passed out by the puncture which it had occupied, but there was more than twenty ounces of the poisonous fluid still left in the peritoneal cavity, and death was the result. In the fourth case the puncture was made in the lowest part of the Douglas cul-de-sac, and a drainage-tube introduced entirely through the pelvis, one end