On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson.

  • Robert Gooch
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    203/302 (page 141)
    difficulty, and the result more questionable than when the stalk is narrow, it affords the only chance of saving the patient, and that a very probable one. Having now described the common polypus of the uterus, the symptoms which it produces, and its fatal tendency, the cases with which it may be confounded, and how to distinguish them, the mode of cure, the dangers of the operation, and how to avoid them, I will relate one or two cases, to show the young surgeon the obscurity in which the disease is sometimes involved, and the deplorable cir- cumstances from which he may withdraw his patient by a prudent apphcation of the foregoing rules of practice. These cases I shall select fi-om among the most difficult which I have met with, so that he need not anticipate the same difficulties as of ordinary occur- rence. IV. A lady between thirty and forty years of age, who had been married many years without ever being pregnant, and resided in a provincial city, became subject to frequent and violent ligemorrhages from the uterus. She was attended first by her family surgeon, and next she was seen by one of the most eminent and experienced of the provincial surgeons, by whom her uterus was examined and pronounced to be cancerous. As she was one of a religious family, the fatal nature of her complaint was explained to her, and as she suffered much pain, she was resigned to nightly and sometimes daily opiates. As her symptoms neither grew better nor worse, the uterus, after a long interval, was examined again, and it was then discovered that what was supposed to be a scirrhus, was in reality a large polypus. It was thought, however, impossible or unsafe to remove it until it had descended lower; for it was too high up for the application of the ligature. Months passed, during which she continued to take opium, lose blood, and become anasarcous. A time having been fixed when it AYOuld be probable that the tumour would be low enough for the application of the ligature, and that time having arrived without the hoped-for result, she determined to wait no longer, but travel by short and easy journeys to London, where she arrived one evening. I saw her the next morning. She was anasarcous from head to foot, so much so in the face as almost to obliterate her featui-es; pain and sleepless nig]\ts required two full opiates every day; she vomited frequently, and had a quick pulse. I found the vagina filled with a tumour so large, that although I could pass my finger round it.