Urethrotomy : external and internal combined, in cases of multiple and difficult stricture : with remarks on the urethral calibre / by Fessenden N. Otis.
- Fessenden Nott Otis
- Date:
- 1874
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Urethrotomy : external and internal combined, in cases of multiple and difficult stricture : with remarks on the urethral calibre / by Fessenden N. Otis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![to multiple strictures, I will quote from a late edition of Sir Ilenry Thompson’s work,1 concerning the number of strictures found in a single urethra : “ Occasionally,” he remarks, “ sev- eral separate strictures may be observed in the same subject. John Hunter records an instance where he met with six strict- ures in one urethra : Lallemand mentions one with seven. Colot saw one with eight. Ducamp says there are rarely more than two, but that he has seen four or five. Boyer thought that three could exist together. A case is reported by Leroy D’Etiolles in which he found eleven ; u but,” Sir Henry further remarks,'“ it is necessary to state that this number rests only on the evidence afforded by the passage of an exploratory bulbous bougie (that is, a small gum-elastic sound with an olive-shaped extremity two or three sizes larger than the stem) on the per- son of a living patient. . . . The strictures,” Sir Henry says, “ to use the author’s words, £ were for the most part in the spongy portion, about two and one-quarter lines distant from each other]—“ a condition,” says Sir Henry, u which would perhaps be better described as a series of irregular contrac- tions than by any statement of the exact number of the strict- ures. Rokitansky speaks of four, and does not record a higher number as having come under his own personal observation.” . . . “ My own researches,” he further states, “ have not led me to recognize numerous independent strictures in one ure- thra. Three or at most four distinct contractions I have seen, but such instances are very rare.” With the exception of M. Leroy D’Etiolles, Sir Henry Thompson does not inform us as to the methods of exploration in use by the various authorities he quotes—which, it seems to me, must greatly affect the value of their observations; and, in regard to the method of M. Leroy D’Etiolles, he casts an impu- tation of inaccuracy upon it by stating that the evidence of the existence of eleven strictures in a single urethra, wrhich he claims to have demonstrated, rests only upon the evidence afforded by the bulbous sound; and, as if this were not suffi- cient to discredit the possibility of eleven strictures coinci- dently existing in the same urethra, he says, even if they were defined by the bulbous sound, that they were not strict- 1 “ Strictures of the Urethra,” London, 1869, p. 68.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22453465_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
