On some points in the surgery of the urinary organs / by Reginald Harrison.

  • Reginald Harrison
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some points in the surgery of the urinary organs / by Reginald Harrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    well as exit from the bladder which no other method possesses. In the controversy that has been recently raging in reference to the relative advantages between supra- pubic and perinea] lithotomy, I cannot help thinking that much of the difficulty which some have associated with lateral lithotomy, or Cheselden's operation, is, in a measure, due to a wrong conception of the way this operation should be performed. The point where it seems to me some surgeons are at variance with the description laid down by authorities on this subject is in reference to the employment of dilatation with the finger as a means of entering the bladder. I contend that such a process, whether there are grounds for its adoption, so far as the literature of the subject is con- cerned, or not, is not only unnecessary, but dangerous. It is unnecessary because the opening into the bladder can be safely made with the knife, sufficient to permit of the finger being put, and not pushed, into the viscus; it is dangerous because the risk is not incon- siderable of wrecking the operation by rupturing the urethra, especially in young children, and by destroy- ing with the finger the natural relations of the parts. It is a misconception of this kind which alone imports an element of danger, so far as the mechanism of perineal lithotomy is concerned. Of the advantage that the latter operation affords as a means of drain- ing the bladder I need not again speak. But though, as I have incidentally hinted, supra- pubic cystotomy will probably commend itself to some practitioners by the comparative facility with which it
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