On artificial dilatation of the os and cervix uteri by fluid pressure from above : a reply to Drs. Keiller of Edinburgh, and Arnott and Barnes of London / by Horatio R. Storer, M.D.

  • Storer, Horatio Robinson, 1830-1922.
Date:
1863
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On artificial dilatation of the os and cervix uteri by fluid pressure from above : a reply to Drs. Keiller of Edinburgh, and Arnott and Barnes of London / by Horatio R. Storer, M.D. 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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    plication of the method to practice having been with a case of pla- centa prajvia, in April, 1860, just a year subsequently to those of Dr. Keiller and myself. His ^papcr was received with marked at- tention, and the discussion which followed is well worthy of general perusal. Dr. Barnes discarded, as I had already insisted should be done, the use of air for purposes of uterine dilatation, and claim- ed, as I had done, that water was the only allowable medium—going on to assert that by this means the practitioner was enabled to deliver almost at will, not only on a fixed day, but at a predeter- mined hour; a power that gives us control over cases of convulsions, obstinate vomiting, exhaustion from disease or haemorrhage, much needed and not hitherto possessed.* In a subsequent paper, a yqar later, upon the new method of inducing premature labor at a predetermined hour, Dr. Barnes seems more decidedly to claim the proposal as originally his own,t whereas, in fact, he but modified the shape of the dilating sac, mak- ing it fiddle-shaped, so as to act both from above and below, a nicety that in practical application possesses little or no advantage over the original form. Finally, during the last month,:]: there appeared a commu- nication from Dr. James Arnott, of London—to whose celebrity in former years for his various applications of fluid pressure and congelation to medical and surgical practice, I have already allud- ed—calling our attention, by name, to what he considers forgetful- ness or intentional omission. -The article to which I now refer is nearly identical with a letter by the same gentleman,§ shortly after our first proposals in 1859. It will have been noticed that in my own first communication, I acknowledged the fact that the instrument then proposed, like that suggested for the female urethra by Spencer Wells, was really based upon Arnott's dilator for the male.|| Dr. Keiller, in his paper of March last, allows that his own conception of the idea was from the instrument of Mr. Wells,! and Dr. Barnes also acknowledges that the original suggestion of fluid pressure for purposes of dilatation was by Arnott,** So far as I can ascertain, however, though Ar- nott in the various publications, to which he has lately referred did recognize the real action of the fluid wedge, by which the distended membranes produce dilatation .in labor, his application of the theory was to the OBfrom below, or in the course of the cervLx, if this canal t ^f'-^^^T^ .'^ Gazette, April, 1861, p. 456. ^„tJ^. -^fJ»'y> .1862. It Ik to this paper that the profession m-c probably in- H n f - P''''f it?o» of Dr. Keiller's views upon the subject, some i5nc months later they being professedly in answer to Dr. Barnes' claim. 1 Ibid., April, 1863, p. 908. v^auii. i Med. Times and Gazette, July, 1859, p 69 I ^^i',™*^! I^cclical Seicnces. July, 1859, p. 108. f Ed. Medical Journal, Marcli, 1863, p. 784 ** Trans, of Oljst. Soc. of Loudon, Vol. iii.,'1862, p. 120.