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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    wliich resulted from the man being impaled by a ])itchfork. While sliding down a hayrick, one prong ])assed through the anus, injuring the prostatic luethra, while the other passed up between his legs with- out doing any injury. An almost identical case is recorded by the late Mr. Tufnell, in the proceedings of the Pathological Society of Dublin,* in which one prong of a pitchfork penetrated the rectum, dividing the prostate gland in two. The patient died on the fifth day. Mr. Prescott Hewettf published the particulars of a perforating wound of the rectum, from a person falling upon the leg of a chair which penetrated the anus. The result proved fatal. A simi- lar case is related as occurring from a person falling on a stake fixed in the ground, in which the posterior wall of the bladder was much lacerated through the rectum. Recovery followed, urine being evacuated by the urethra after two months. | Sir William Stokes mentions a case S in which a lad fell on a long ironworker's tongs, one handle of which penetrated the anus, entered the bladder, and again perforating this viscus opened into the peritonceal cavity. He was brought to the Pichmond Hospital in a state of profound collapse, and died shortly afterwards. These cases are interesting in showing how serious injuries might be inflicted upon the abdominal viscera without any cutaneous wound existing ; and in the absence of any accurate history, considerable difficulty might be found in makins: a diagnosis. A case is recorded bv Birkett, || in which a patient suffering from rectal ulcer, himself passed an enema syringe through the floor of the ulcer, opening up the loose areolar tissue of the pelvis. This was followed by emphysema of the * Vol. iv. part 2. t Trans, Path. Soc, London, vol. i. p. 152. X Holmes' System of Surgery, vol. ii. p. 722. Second edition. § Trans. Acad. Med., Ireland, vol. i. p. 88. II Holmes' System of Surgery, loc. cit, p. 753.