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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    pass the ileo-coccal valve. In a case recorded by Pilcher,* a woman sutioring from melancholia swal- lowed a number of nails, pebbles, etc., in the hope of committing suicide, and, subsequently, in the space of six weeks, passed by the rectum three hundred grammes weight of various substances, including nine- teen large pointed nails, a screw seven centimetres long, numerous pieces of earthenware and glass, a piece of needle, two knitting needles, a piece of whale- bone, etc. Concretions found in the rectum may consist entirely of fjecal matter, sometimes formed round a small foreign body as a nucleus, such as a chicken bone; or the concretion may be formed of some unusual and indigestible substances swallowed, as the oat-hair concretiojis met with sometimes in Scot- land ; or as in a case recorded by Gross,! in which an enormous rectal concretion was composed largely of calcined mamesia. Foreig^u bodies introduced tlirougli anus. —According to Captain Hamilton,^ at Balasore on the Bay of Bengal, it was the custom of the people there every morning after defecation to put into the rectum a dried clay plug, which remained in position till the next morning, when it was removed to allow the bowels to move, a fresh one being subsequently employed. The plugs were found scattered about the ground in great numbers, and proved a puzzle to visitors till the custom was explained to them. In some countries still the introduction of foreign bodies is adopted as a means of punishment. The rectum has occasionally been made a hiding place for jewels, etc. ; and, according to Poulet, § * Lancet, vol. i. ]p. 23 ; 1866. t Vol. ii. p. 570. J A New Account of the East Indies, London, 1708. § Foreign Eodies in Surgery, vol. i. p. 222.