Reflections on Petit's operation, and on purgatives after herniotomy / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reflections on Petit's operation, and on purgatives after herniotomy / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/52 (page 13)
    with long exposure, and much handling of the viscera; and the violence necessarily inflicted in executing such an attempt renders the subsequent occurrence of inflammation almost certain. In laying open the whole of a large hernial tumour, the exposure of so extensive a surface is a source of great danger to the patient, who, in such cases, is frequently advanced in years, and therefore less able to withstand extensive inflammation and sup- puration, We must remember, too, that in large herniac, which have been long irreducible, the ab- domen becomes accommodated to the diminished bulk of its contents ; and that either it will not yield sufficiently to receive again the parts which have been long protruded, so that we cannot re- ])lace them, or, if we should accomplish the return, it is so painfully distended that the replaced viscera are soon forced out again. Moreover, tlie ring is so much dilated in those cases, that hernia will certainly reappear ; and consequently there can be no expectation of a radical cure from the operation. Tliesc reflections will induce us to adopt the prac- tice of removing the stricture without opening the tumour in all such cases.” Of the tenor of Mr. South’s opposition, the following passage from his annotated edition of ChcUus (vol. ii, p. 47) will give an idea:—“ From my own personal experience of the division of the stricture external to the sac, I can say nothing, never having performed it. But I do not think so great advantage is gained by not