Volume 1

A manual of medical treatment or clinical therapeutics / by I. Burney Yeo.

  • Isaac Burney Yeo
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical treatment or clinical therapeutics / by I. Burney Yeo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    62/664 (page 42)
    that only the water and salts are absorbed. They are stimulating, however, and allay thirst, and must not be regarded as useless. Wine and alcohol can also be absorbed by the large intestine. But food given by the rectum in order to be absorbed should be feptonised, and it is also necessary that the rectum be washed out with an enema of tepid water before each nutrient injection. Nutrient sup- positories are of doubtful value; we have known instances in which the large intestine has been found crammed with them on post-mortem examination. Nutrient enemata should be given by means of a long tube (not too flexible, or it may bend back on itself) passed as high up as possible, so as to be brought into contact with as large an extent of absorbing surface as practicable. We shall refer to some suitable forms of nutrient enemata in subsequent chapters {e.g. see foot-note, page 72). Dujardin-Beaumetz advises the following :—The yolk of an egg is beaten up with a glass of milk, and to this is added either two dessert- spoonfuls of solid peptones or two tablespoonfuls of liquid peptones, 5 drops of laudanum, and if the pep- tones are acid, 7 or 8 grains of bicarbonate of soda. The secretion of the lai'ge intestine is alkaline, and acids irritate it, and in cases where prolonged ali- mentation by the rectum is necessary all irritation of its mucous membrane must be carefully avoided.* Catillon kept a dog alive in good condition for thirty-seven days by rectal injections consisting of, daily, two lavements, each composed of three eggs and a dram and a half of liquid glycerine of pepsine; given without the pepsine the dog wasted rapidly, and when this was replaced by fluid blood he rapidly sank. Daremberg,t in a case of stricture of the oesophagus, kept a patient alive for fourteen months, and with a daily excretion of urea amounting to from 225 to 300 grains, by means of peptonised enemata made in the * Le9ons de Clinique Th^rapeutiqiTe : Derintestin au point de nie tli&-apeutique. Vol. i. ]). 620. + De I'Alimentation par les Peptones. Gaz. Hchd., 1879.