On the relief of excessive and dangerous tympanites, by puncture of the abdomen : a memoir / by John W. Ogle.

  • John Ogle
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relief of excessive and dangerous tympanites, by puncture of the abdomen : a memoir / by John W. Ogle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and concludes with the following weighty remarks : When I picture to myself the immense distress and suffering present in an intensely tympanitic patient, whatever may be its cause, and then recall to mind the ease and quiet, if not anything more, which we are enabled to afford our patient by what I am bound to describe as a simple, harmless, and painless operation, I feel drawn to the conclusion that it is a proceeding not only justifiable, but urgently demanded at our hands. In a letter which I afterwards received from Dr Wathen, he says that he has not had further occasion to punc- ture the abdomen for tympanites, but that he had been called upon, along with Dr. Howard of New- port, Pembrokeshire, to puncture a large hernia with the view of reducing its size [7]. Subsequent to Dr Wathen's communication, Dr Saunders, resident physician at the Devon Asylum, sent a memorandum to the ' British Medical Journal,* in which he gives an interesting resume of what had been advanced by authorities in the last century regarding the proceeding in question. To this communication I have elsewhere alluded.f In the same year (1871), the same journal (Nov. 4th) contained the details of a case, related by Mr Brown, of Ealing, of a boy suffering from tubercular peritonitis. Collapse came on, in spite of remedies ; but entire recovery followed puncture of the abdo- * November 18th, 1871. t See p. 8.