A memoir on stricture of the urethra / by John P. Mettauer.

  • John Peter Mettauer
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memoir on stricture of the urethra / by John P. Mettauer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Iressing form with intemperate eaters, or wine bibers ; ami with dyspeptics. Individuals of rheumatic and gouty aptitudes are, also liable to it in violent forms. Most of die cases of retention ol urine, suddenly induced, result from spasmodic stricture. Fre- quently repeated, this form may, and often does produce perma- nent stricture. The Mixed variety is distinguished by a congested state of the parts affected with spasm, manifested by a remarkable disposition of the urethra to effuse blood, during attempts at cotheterism, and occasionally without such attempts; as well as by preternatural fullness of the seat of the contraction ; to be discovered between the fits of spasm, both with the catheter, and, externally, in some instances, by pressure along the course of the urethra with the linger. There is also a mixed variety, complicating the perma- nent form of stricture, consisting of the varieties which have been described, and the mutations of structure peculiar to it. An ex- ample of ordinary mixed stricture is to be met with, in nearly every variety of urethritis. Masturbation ; excessive indulgence in wine and women ; hard rides on horseback; and repeated attacks of the spasmodic, are some of the causes of this variety; and it is the form of the disease most liable to end in permanent stiic- ture. Organic, ox Permanent Stricture consists in fixed contraction, or narrowing of the urethral passage, the result of thickening of its walls. It is by far the most difficult variety to understand, as well as to treat; and, must interest the profession corresponding!v, and profoundly too. This form of the disease has its seat in the mucous and submucous textures of the urethra, seldom if ever involving the muscular or other structures of its walls, unless rup- ture ; ulceration ; or ordinary wounds are its causes ;^md it is in- duced by the deposition of coagulable lymph, either beneath the mucous lining, without implicating the submucous textures; or involving both of these structures. The lymph becoming organ- ized, gradually thickens the walls,—the urethra in the same ratio becoming swollen,—inelastic, and incapable of dilatation. In nearly every instance, these pathological charges are due to irrita- tion set up in the parts affected, by some of the causes which have been enumerated ; and the whole process is unquestionably a form of sub acute infiammation,such as doubtless attends upon scrofula, and many examples of hypertrophy, in which lymph is also effu- sed and organize 1, so as to change the forms as well as the anato- mical conditions of the organs in which it takes place. That this form of stricture depends on thickening of the walls of the ure- thra, is placed.bcyond all doubt by the numerous operative clissec-