Introduction to the Catalogue of the collection of calculi of the bladder : upwards of one thousand in number, besides foreign bodies, removed by operation / by Sir Henry Thompson.

  • Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introduction to the Catalogue of the collection of calculi of the bladder : upwards of one thousand in number, besides foreign bodies, removed by operation / by Sir Henry Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is a stringent one, laid down as it was at the outset; but I have preferred to err, if at all, in accepting a rather too large j)roportion of deaths, than by adopting tlie opposite course. In considering the question of death, it is of course absolutely necessarj^ to deal with children and adults in separate classes. The different degree of risk incurred from lithotomy in childhood and manhood is so great as to render practically useless any numerical inferences regarding the mortality of cases in which this distinction of age is not kept clearly in view. The number of children is so small in this collection that my remarks will be very brief. There were 16 male children and 1 female. Four were treated by lithotrity, and 13, being mostly large stones, by lithotomy, a very large one being by the suprapubic method. I commenced on the prin- ciple of employing lithotrity for children whenever the calculus could be crushed at one sitting, and the very first case of stone which fell to my lot occurred in a girl, and was thus crushed in 1854.^ Tliree other cases followed, at University College Hospital, the first being in the year 1860, and all successful. This treatment I advocated at some length in my first work on Calculus pubhshed in 1863, alluding to the practice adopted in the Children's Hospital in Paris, where large calcuh were crushed at numerous sittings, with very unsatisfactory results.^ Among the ten lithotomies in children, there was one death, a case of deformed pelvis from rickets, which, as well as the calculus, I exliibited at the Eoyal • Medical and Chirurgical Society (see Trans, vol. xlvii.), in > Vide Lancet, Oct. 21, 1854. 2 Practical Lithotomy and Litlwtrity (Churchill, 1863), pp. 207-211.
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