On ovarian dropsy : with cases of ovariotomy / by Thomas Keith.

  • Thomas Keith
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On ovarian dropsy : with cases of ovariotomy / by Thomas Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    experience of tapping has been equally unfortunate. I have seen it, on one occasion, followed by death in a favourable case within forty-eight hours, and, in many instances, it is but another name for slow death, at least such has been my experience of it. When the disease is allowed to run its natural course, there is generally much more suffering in connexion with it than is usually supposed, and death from it is a very lingering and a very painful one. The cases that live long, in good health, are proportionally very few in number. You hear of them for a long time; one case lasts a life¬ time, and is always before one, while the many who die early are soon forgotten. Besides, these longlived cases are sometimes in reality examples of fibrous tumours of the uterus. u What makes you cut into women,” said a member of this Society to me one day ; “if you would only let them alone they would live far longer. There is Miss-, she has had an ovarian tumour for the last twenty years, and she walks out and in to town as well as I can.” Now I had seen Miss-. Hers was not a case of ovarian disease, but one of a large fibrous tumour of the uterus; and I know of another similar case of fibrous tumour that had long and often been mistaken for ovarian disease. I have found, on trial, all the various half-measures brought forward for the cure of this formidable disease very tedious, very dangerous, and at best most unsatisfactory; still, there was little inducement for one here to attempt the radical cure; for with the exception of Mr Lizars’s case, forty years ago—the first successful case in Great Britain—all attempts in Scotland had uniformly been attended with unsuccess, and there was still less encouragement to recommend it to patients, who, naturally, hearing but of fatal results, were most unwilling to entertain the thought of it. Show me a successful case was the invariable reply; and, though long per¬ suaded that ovariotomy was one of the most justifiable operations in surgery, I shrank from the performance of it. Besides, the more recent statistics by Mr Clay of the fatality of the operation, in the hands of first operators, was most discouraging. For, of 87 single operations performed by individual operators, only 34 recovered, and of 27 attempted operations, 20 died and but 7 survived to die of the natural termination of the disease. At this time two very instructive and suggestive cases occurred within a short time of each other in the practice of my brother. The first was that of a patient from the country, about forty-five years of age. The tumour was a large multilocular one, and increas¬ ing rapidly. My brother proposed to perform ovariotomy j but, on going to see her, within a fortnight of her first visit to him, he found her in bed feverish and ill. Her health broke up; she never got into a state for operation, and she died soon after. The second case was that of a young patient, about twenty years of age, also from the country. The tumour was of ten months’ growth, multilocular, and-her health was giving way very fast.
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