Volume 8

Contributions to surgery and medicine / by H.O. Thomas.

  • Hugh Owen Thomas
Date:
1881-1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to surgery and medicine / by H.O. Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/20 (page 11)
    [Part viii.] X I stone ; it could be easily felt on the introduction of the finger, but its detection by the forceps was not so easy, as it lay high up behind the pubes. Its extraction delayed the operation ten minutes. Again as to the cause of fatality in both cases, it was significant that the infant was subjected to no preliminary preparation, and the adult to only three days, this omission was committed by me on five occasions, every one of which opera- tions were followed by grave symptoms ; a week or two generally longer, of preparation, is my usual practice, and obviously must be a valuable item towards the success of this or any other operation. Last year a patient of seventy-two years of age was operated upon, a most uninviting subject. Six weeks were devo- ted to his preparation, and he did exceptionally well ; it was the second successfully operated upon at this advanced age. From one there was removed seven calculi each of three quarters of an inch in diameter; he was an asthmatic subject, and had angular deformity of left hip-joint. He returned to me twelve months afterwards for examination and on sounding the viscus, there was evidence of his having made up for his loss, as another lot of calculi had been formed. On this occasion he declined to be recut, not an unwise decision as he appeared, independent- ly of his years, a well worn man, though not a confirmed invalid. Once I re-incised a boy of three and a half years, and extracted a stone though six months previously another had been removed while he was an inmate of a public hospital. On another occasion after incising the viscus there was . extracted the wooden holder of a writing pen.