The vermiform appendix and its diseases / by Duncan Macartney.

  • Macartney, Duncan.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The vermiform appendix and its diseases / by Duncan Macartney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    back the hands of the clock, while progress quickly followed when it was found that the appendix was the seat of disease, and that in spite of the hybrid term “ appendicitis,” loathed of the classicists in the profession always when looked at, and very often when pronounced. [The pronunciation should be “ appendiseetis ” or “ appendikytis,” according as your Latin is of the Scotch or English variety.] The first clear description (in English) of this subject in the early part of last century is contained in the Elements of the Practice of Medicine, by Richard Bright and Thomas Addison. In the few pages they devote to diseases of the appendix occurs the following: “ From numerous dissections it is proved that the faecal abscess thus formed in the right iliac region arises in a large majority of cases from disease set up in the appendix caeci. It is found that the organ is very subject to inflammation, to ulceration, and- even to gangrene; and, moreover, that it is occasionally thickened and ulcerated from tubercular deposits. This little worm-like body is often detected in the midst of the abscess, with a perforation at its ex- tremity, or by ulceration higher up in its parietes, a considerable portion of it nearly or entirely separated is found in a disorganised condition among the pus and faeces which fill up the abscess. “ It is possible that the secretions of the appendix itself may sometimes become diseased and give rise to inflammatory action in the part: sometimes we can plainly discover that stricture, amounting even to occlusion of the cavity, has taken place, so that the