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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![clergyman, recorded by Curling, in whom the desire usually came on just before commencing divine service. Cases of this kind are best treated by urging the patient to try and overcome the inclina- tion, in which, with the exercise of a little moral control, they will usually ])rove successful. (2) Neuralgia.—As in other parts of the body, pain of a more or less severe character may exist at the lower end of the bowel, without any discoverable cause. It is usually found in rather weak and hypo- chondriacal males, and hysterical females. At other times pain referred to the anus and interior of the rectum may have its origin in an injury to the coccyx, constituting one of the symptoms of the so- called coccygodynia. These cases are to be treated in the same way that vague neuralgias of other parts of the body are, but it must be admitted that for the most part they are exceedingly unsatisfactory cases to deal with. (3) Morbid sensibility.—The third class is when there is a true hypersesthesia of some par- ticular spot, Avhich frequently is associated with more or less spasm of the sphincters and levatores ani. These symptoms are usually all much aggravated by passing a motion, the pain afterwards being very severe. In the great majority of patients suffering from these symptoms, a definite cause will be found in the presence of a small irritable ulcer or painful fissure; but in a few, no such obvious pathological condition is to be seen. If, however, the symptoms are really severe, the best treatment to adopt is that which would be applied to fissure, namely, forcible dilatation. z-23](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21229387_0409.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
