Successful ligature of the common iliac artery / by Valentine Mott.

  • Valentine Mott
Date:
[1827?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Successful ligature of the common iliac artery / by Valentine Mott. 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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    Successful Ligature of the Common Iliac Artery. By Valentine M ott, M. D. Professor of Surgery, New York. [Extracted from the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, for Nov. 1827.] A detailed account of the first operation ever performed upon the arteria iliaca communis, for the cure of aneurism, and especially of the first attempt to apply the ligature to so great a vessel, without dividing the peritoneum, may prove interesting to the profession ge- nerally, and must be immediately serviceable to practitioners of sur- gery. It is therefore as an act of duty, rather than of choice, that the following statement has been prepared, during such few and brief intervals of leisure, as could be obtained amid the daily engagements and solicitudes of business. On the 15th of March, 1827, I was requested to visit a patient with Dr. Osborn, (of Westfield, New Jersey, about twenty-five miles distant from New York,) whom we found labouring under a large aneurism of the right external iliac artery. Israel Crane, aged thirty-three years, by occupation a farmer, of temperate and regular habits, having generally enjoyed excellent health, says about the middle of January he felt some pain about the lower part of the belly, which lie attributed to a fall received during the winter. He is in the habit of using great efforts in lifting heavy logs of wood, as his employment at this season consists in carrying wood to market. It, however, was not until a fortnight since, that he perceived any tumour about the lower part of the abdomen. Upon examination, the abdomen on the right side was considerably enlarged from about the crural arch, as high as the umbilicus. When the hand was applied to the parietes of the abdomen, a pulsation was felt and rendered visible to some distance. To the touch the tumour beat violently, and appeared to contain only fluid blood. It commenced a little above Poupart's ligament, and reached, judging by the touch, from without, near the navel—inwards, almost to the linea alba— outwards and backwards filling up all the concavity of the ilium, and reaching beyond the posterior spinous process of that bone. The rapid increase of this aneurismal tumour occasioned, as the countenance of our patient indicated, the most extreme agony. His sufferings at times were so great that his screams could be heard at a distance from the house. He had been bled several times, taken light food, and was kept constantly under the effect of opium. He was now informed of the serious nature of his case, and that without