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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    MacCormac' gives an account of tliree cases of pelvic gun- sliot-wounds that recovered under treatment in the Anglo- American ambulance at Sedan. In one case, the ball entered on the left side of the coccyx, traversed the rectum and bladder, and emerged just above the symphysis pubis. For a considerable time all the fjEces passed by the posterior opening, while the urine flowed entirely by the anterior wound. He recovered without one single unfavorable symp- tom. Both wounds had closed by the 18th September, and remained so till his discharge from hospital on September 28th, when he appeared as well as if nothing had happened to him. MacCormac saw three other cases of gunshot-wound of the bladder recover without an accident, two in a Belgian ambulance, and the third under Dr. Junker, at the Chateau de Bazeilles. Four days after the battle of Sedan, I went to Mezieres, for supplies for our wounded soldiers. Travelling under the banner of the red cross, we were hailed at almost every hamlet, and asked to visit the sick and wounded. Among the great number demanding our care, Harry Sims called my attention to a young German who was shot through the pelvis. The ball entered about two inches above Pou- part's ligament, and midway between the linea alba and the crest of the ilium on the left side, and passed directly through the pelvis, wounding the sigmoid flexure. Faeces passed by both openings, but, of course, more freely by the one behind. His pulse was but 78, and there was no pain in any part of the abdomen. Indeed, he had every appearance of a rapid recovery. He was among French wounded, could speak only his own language, and his greatest suffering was from nostal- gia. When my son spoke to him in German, and gave him every assurance of a speedy cure, and of an early removal to a German ambulance, it seemed to raise his drooping spirits, and, from my experience of similar cases before alluded to, I have scarcely a doubt that he eventually got well. Isow, here was a poor fellow shot through the pelvic peritoneal cavity, and yet there was not the least constitutional disturbance, nor the first symptom of peritonitis; and why was this, when aU those * Notes and Kecollections of an Ambulance Surgeon,etc., by Win. MacCormac (pp. 73, 74).