Lithotrity and the new lever lithotrite / by Patrick Heron Watson.

  • Patrick Watson
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lithotrity and the new lever lithotrite / by Patrick Heron Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/8 page 4
    instance overcome by tlie employment of chloroform, whereby the stone was crushed at one sitting; but the importance of some more rapid means of applying the crushing power, as suited to such exigencies, forced itself strongly up¬ on my mind. I accordingly devised for this purpose the ap¬ plication of lever¬ age by means of movable forceps, adapted to each blade of the litho- trite, in such wise that the closing of the handles might approximate the jaws of the lithotrite, and the opening of them, effected by a spring between their shafts, might cause the jaws to gape. The alternate move¬ ment of the jaws thus came to resemble a chewing motion, by means of which I found experimentally that fragments might be safely reduced to detritus with far greater rapidity than by any other movement. I also found that the movement was quite as steady and quite as powerful as that effected by means of the screw. The accompanying woodcut (Fig. 1) shows the entire instrument, with the lever-forceps attached, and open to their full gape. The lithotrite is that usually known as Weiss’s. Its peculiarity consists in the fluted handle containing the female catch screws, which are made to project and seize the male screw rod by means of the gliding slot projecting from the upper surface of the in¬ strument (A, Fig, 4). In employing this lithotrite the surgeon stands on the right side of the recumbent patient, and introduces the instrument into the bladder with the jaws closed, and with¬ out the lever-forceps. Rotating the instrument through rather more than a quarter of a circle, right or left, after having opened the blades in the middle space, he closes them gently, and in all probability at once secures the calculus or the fragment, tie now closes the slot so as steadily to hold the stone in the jaws till the lever- forceps are applied. When they are secured in posi¬ tion, on reversing the slot, the alternate closing and opening of the handle-shafts of the forceps crushes frag¬ ment after fragment. As the larger portions are broken
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image