The rectum and anus : their diseases and treatment.

  • Charles Bent Ball
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

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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    stimulus applied to the intestinal mucous membrane. Dr. Lee has suggested,* that when a patient is trying to get rid of a rectal accumulation much assistance may be derived from firmly pressing up with the fingers into each ischio-rectal fossa, by this means making the presenting mass more wedge-like and easy to pass. Tliere is a form of rectal atony met with in hysterical females and hypocliondriacal nuen, whose attention is morbidly fixed upon the evacuation of their bowels, and whose sole interest appears to be directed to the subject of defsecation. In illustration of this subject I cannot do better than quote from the graphic pen of Dr. Weir Mitchell :t If it happens to you in an evil hour to have one of these cases to treat, with the additional need to treat also the difiiculties with which some tender mother surrounds such a case, you are much to be pitied. 1 recall such an example which I saw in consultation some years ago. It began with a spot of abdominal tenderness over the spleen. Pressure on this caused nausea and vertigo. Then we had convulsions, hysterics, coma, enormous polyuria, and at last constijmtion. The physician in charge gave this list of the drugs given in four days : night and morning on each day an ounce of castor oil, at midday and bed-time one drop of croton oil; three drops had been used in one day. The more drugs she took the more she demanded, and yet it was impossible to see that it gave her ])ain. Meanwhile for the nurse and mother the arransfement for each evacuation was the event of the day. A long stomach tube was carried six or seven inches up the bowel, and half a pint of olive oil injected, then followed one quart to three of flaxseed tea. During the use of the enema one person was occupied compressing the * British Medical Journal, Feb. 10. 1883. t Diseases of the Nervous System. London, 1881.