Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The principles and practice of operative surgery. 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.
742/792 page 714
![Frequent fatality. bunch of gi-apes. Sometimes cysts form within cysts, and each presenting different characters, both as regards the material of the cyst and the nature of the contents. Some may be hned with a vascular membrane, and the exterior is often sub-cartilaginous in textm-e. One or several of such cysts may enlarge at any period of life after jjuberty, till they reach an enormous magnitude, distending the cavity of the abdomen, restricting the powers of respiration, by compression on the diaphragm. Variety in and impairing the function of digestion. The textm-e thegrowtii. ^£ cysts thus formed, varies materially in thickness, exhibiting sometimes the tenuity of a thin membrane, and occasionally acquiring the thickness and substance of a fleshy textm-e. As great a variety pervades the contents which, though generally serous and limpid, assume the varieties of albumen, lymph, puriform and pm-ulent fluid; indeed, when the cysts are bilocidar or midtilocular, the contents of one or more of these tumours may vary in character from the rest. The resort to some agency more eflicient than the temporary benefit derived from .the ordinary operation of punctm-e, has been rendered necessary by the almost universal fatahty that attends the disease, when subjected to the ordinary treatment of tapping. Of such cases it is rai-e that the patient sirrvives the disease for a longer period than two years, and the majority die within twelve months. When, therefore, we consider the frequency and the fatal character of ovarian dropsy, it is not surprising that patients are foimd who will willingly submit to, and surgeons who will undertake an operation which, though not unattended with danger to life, yet oflers the only alternative to almost certain death, by the substitution of means that will, if successful, terminate in their entire recovery. A most correct diagnosis of evei-y case is indispensable to success, withotit which all is tmcertain and luisafe. Indeed, we cannot form any ap])roach to correct statistics of the operation, without the most accm-ate diagnosis ; and the only mode by which we can legitimately reduce the extent of danger to its most moderate limits, is to resort to the radical cure only in such examples of the disease as offer a prospect of the greatest success, and to restrict tlie operation to cases composed of cysts, containing serum, or slightly albu- Correct diagnosis,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21511366_0742.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
