The rectum and anus : their diseases and treatment.

  • Charles Bent Ball
Date:
[1887]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The rectum and anus : their diseases and treatment. 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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    Chap, XX.] N/EVUS OF ReCTUM. 3OI adenomatous.* Van Buren gives a case which he con- sidered was one of chondromatous tumour, but the case was not verified by minute examination. Ang'ioma.—The most remarkable example of this extremely rare condition is that described by Mr. A. E. Barker t (Fig. 43). A healthy man, aged forty-five years, stated that since boyhood he had difficulty in obtaining a motion when he was at all constipated, and that at these times there was bleeding from the bowel. Sometimes he remained free from these symptoms for several years at a time, his bowels as a rule being regular. A careful examination of the wall of the bowel showed three shallow ulcers on the rectal mucous membrane : they were seated on some smooth longi- tudinal folds in the wall of the gut, of a yellowish colour, and suggesting a quantity of fat in the sub- mucous tissue. The ulcers, though shallow, exuded continuously a considerable quantity of blood. Their base, however, presented a peculiar mottling of a purplish colour, as also did the surface of the irregnlar folds alluded to, the whole picture giving rise to the suspicion of a nsevoid mass in the wall of the boweh The statement of the patient that similar bleeding- had occurred on and off since boj^hood seemed to lend support to this view. The patient was subsequently admitted into University College Hospital; the bleed- ing became of daily occurrence, and very copious; and, in spite of all treatment, he died of haemorrhage. At the post-mortem examination the wall of the rectum in its lower four and a half inches was found much thickened by a n?evoid growth in its walls, which gave a purple colour to the mucous membrane. There were three or four prominent longitudinal folds, each three-quarters of an inch or more in width ; the two largest were on the left side of the bowel. * Bull, de la Soc. Anatomiqiie, vol. v. p. 6, second series. t Medico-Cliiriirgical Transactions, vol. Ixvi.