The diseases of the stomach / by Dr. C.A. Ewald.

  • Carl Anton Ewald
Date:
1900, ©1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diseases of the stomach / by Dr. C.A. Ewald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    asserted tlie possibility of using it for diagnostic purposes, and, as later developments proved, opened up an excellent means of ex- amination. Yet in his early investigations Leube as well as his predecessors exclusively used a stiff tube, or a rubber tube with an elastic but more or less rigid whalebone stylet. This procedure has many inconveniences and disadvantages. Instead of this, I was the first to show that a very soft tube without any stylet, provided it had a thick wall and a sufficient firmness, could be easily intro- duced into the stomach in the great majority of cases requiring examination.* As occurs so frequently, this was the result of chance. In 18Y5 a man who had poisoned himself with prussic acid was brought to the Frerich clinic. The stomach had to be washed out at once. ISTone of the stiff tubes which were then in use was at hand, so I cut off a piece of gas tubing, rounded off the sharp end, cut out two eyelets, oiled the tube, and, although the man was unconscious, I easily succeeded in reaching the stomach. A similar procedure was pubhshed later by Oser.f It is now quite universal to employ only soft, vulcanized rubber tubes like Nek- ton's urethral catheters. They have been used in France since 1880, and are known, as tubes Faucher.X The expressions oesophageal sound, oesophageal tube, stomach sound, siphon sound, stomach pump, stomach tube, etc., are indis- criminately used by writers, and not in their true meaning. Sounds, strictly sj)eaking, are instruments whose solidity permits the trans- fer of the sense of touch into deep and inaccessible places. Hol- low instruments can only be indirectly used for sounding, if their walls are thick enough, as, for example, the use of a catheter for exploring the bladder. The same is true also of the so-called stiff oesophageal and stomach tubes, which may be used to explore the oesophagus and stomach if they are rigid enough and are rounded * Ewald. A Ready Method of washing out the Stomach. Irish Gazette, August 15, 1874, and Berlin, klin. Wochenschr., 1875, No. 1. f L. Oser. Die mechanische Behandlung der Magen- und Darmkrankheiten. Wiener med. Klinik, 1875; and Die Magenaussptilung mittelst des elastischen Schlauches. Wiener med. Presse, 1887, No. 1. X [Faueher's tubes are about 60 inches long; the external diameter is f to f inch; the walls are of such thickness that the tube can be bent without effacing its lumen. At one exti^emity is a lateral eye with two orifices; to the other extremity a funnel holding about a pint is attached. Welch.—Ed.]