Splanchnoptosis from the standpoint of the physician / by Kate Campbell Mead.

  • Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Splanchnoptosis from the standpoint of the physician / by Kate Campbell Mead. 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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    (see Rolleston 9). Tight lacing is also the al- leged cause of Riedel’s lobes or tongue-like spurs of liver often found in women. Both the liver and spleen are normally “ floating ” bodies, sup- ported by the mutual pressure of the stomach and bowels and anchored by the peritonaeum. Glen- ard (10) and others have estimated that 20 per cent, of patients suffering from diseases of nutri- tion have some degree of hepatoptosis, most of these being women. Many of these patients have no real prolapse of the liver, but merely Riedel’s tongue-like lobes. If the ligaments which an- chor the liver to the diaphragm are congenitally weak or are weakened from lack of nourishment and are then subjected to strains or stretching, the entire liver may be found to have fallen into the abdominal cavity to a greater or lesser degree, according to the causes. It is possible that tight lacing so weakens the abdominal muscles as to increase the conditions favorable to hepatoptosis, in that it diminishes intraabdominal pressure. The symptoms of hepatoptosis are a steady feel- ing of discomfort in the right side and distress under the right scapula and behind the sternum, or the pain of cholecystitis or cholelithiasis, or of hepatic cirrhosis (including ascites), as well as a chronic cough and some hysteria. The symptoms of visceral ptosis in general de- pend upon the degree of constitutional weakness and the amount of organic derangement. The patient is always weary, and most comfortable lying down with loosened clothing on account of the gas in the stomach or bowels, or she has acid eructations, or heart burn, and generally a white tongue, or she may have acute attacks of colic from the ptosis of a kidney, especially if a ureter becomes kinked. Some of these patients may need to be operated upon for relief of the ptosis,