Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Outlines of human pathology / by Herbert Mayo. 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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![loss of extensibility of part of the lining membrane from chronic inflammation, [x. 130. 131.] The ordinary length of a stricture is about two lines; but it varies from half a line to an inch and a half. [.r. 135.] The ordinary place of stric- ture is the passage through the ligament of Camper; but sometimes stricture occurs in the middle of the urethra, sometimes at the orifice; it never occurs in the membranous part of the urethra, or in the prostate. Generally there is but one stricture; sometimes there are several: in that case the first and the narrowest is situated at Camper's liga- ment. Sometimes the whole length of the urethra con- tained in the corpus spongiosum is narrowed, and at par- ticular points more especially contracted. Sometimes the orifice alone is contracted. A linear stricture is sometimes oblique, [x. 132. 134.] When the channel of the urethra is constricted at any part several local consequences follow. a. The texture surrounding the membrane becomes con- densed by an extension of inflammation. In a gentleman from a hot climate, who died after cure of a stricture, which was attended by, and left considerable firm gristly induration at one part of the urethra, the tumour was found to have been caused by a deposition of lymph into the cells of the corpus spongiosum. Immediately behind the stricture there was an orifice leading into a long narrmv sinus, extending from the urethra forwards into the gristly substance of the tumour.—Brodie. b. The urethra behind the stricture becomes more or less dilated. In the following case the dilatation was extra- ordinary. In a gentleman, who laboured under stricture, the canal be- hind the obstruction was so dilated, that whenever he made water a tumour as large as a small orange, and affording a distinct fluctuation, could be felt in the perineum.—Brodie. c. The surface of the distended part is liable to inflame, and to be covered with an exsudation of coagulable lymph. [:r. 137.] This circumstance will cause pain in the expulsion of the urine. Some pain and heat in the urethra are generally present from irritation of the surface posterior to the stricture,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21066735_0586.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
