Practical remarks on hernia trusses : being a communication made to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, on the 24th March, 1862 / by Joseph Arbuckle.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical remarks on hernia trusses : being a communication made to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, on the 24th March, 1862 / by Joseph Arbuckle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    under strap except in very extraordinary cases; indeed it is only in eases where the patient is very old and feeble and the body not thin but the parts soft and watery that any addition to the truss will be required at all, and in these cases a very thick and soft stuffed strap may be applied just as a continuation of the pad, for in these cases the muscles are so soft, and like all other members of the body worn out, will not so easily resume their proper functions; and a truss made to suit an ordinary case may in this case, from the size of the pad, or strength of the spring, be unsuitable, as the entire amount of gut escaped from the orifice may not be so easily felt, and the pad may press in on the orifice and leave the gut protruding on all sides of the pad, above and below, but especially below ; in these cases it is best to make the spring of the truss broad, though not strong, and the pad large but well fitted, and in every case the spring must be made on the correct anatomical principles of adaptation to the shape of the body as described here. The truss I have described will perform a perfect cure on children, and may be applied with safety on an infant two weeks’ old. The only defect in the Common Truss, even with the above men- tioned improvements in measurement, &c., I have endeavoured to remove, and I think I have been successful. When a truss is worn a few days the stuffing gets flattened, and then the truss is larger than it was when the stuffing was new, or in cases where the patient is troubled with flatulence, or any other disorder affecting the measurement; in fact, in any case where a patient will measure more this week than he will do a week hence, the truss will be too large, and the pad will pass the proper place. To obviate this, and to regulate the truss at all times to a hairsbreadth in nicity, I have made the spring in two pieces, the front part about three inches from the pad to elongate or shorten from one to two inches without trouble, by having a slit cut in the end of the front part of the spring, making it to slide through a clasp on the end of the other part of the spring and tighten it with a screw to the size required. In addition to this, I have applied a pad suitable for Femoral Hernia, also for the cure of Varicocele, the extreme end of the short spring with the slit cut in it to lengthen or shorten is screwed to the pad, and half an inch from the end there is another slit cut in the spring a part of a circle, which allows the pad to be fixed in any particular direction required. The above remarks and directions on single trusses refer with equal force to double trusses, the principle of making and fitting is in every respect the same, but a double truss is for many reasons better than a single truss, only that it is double the price. There are very tew cases of double rupture but what were single
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