Foreign bodies in the air-passages : the substance of two clinical lectures delivered in the Western Infirmary, Glasgow / by Hector C. Cameron.

  • Cameron, Hector Clare, 1843-1928.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foreign bodies in the air-passages : the substance of two clinical lectures delivered in the Western Infirmary, Glasgow / by Hector C. Cameron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    IN T1-; 1! X A TIO X A1, C.' M X ICS. ever, I ruffled up iu the floor of the nostril something which had the appearance of a gray slough. Seizing it with torceps, I extracted what turned out to be a piece of cloth, about an iiuth square, soaktKl with abominably fetid discharge. On its being washed, the mother recog- nized from its pattern that it was a fragment from a window-curtain which she had been cutting out and sewing about seven weeks jire- viously. While she was at work the child ])layed on the carpet around, over which cuttings of the cloth were plentifully strewn. The dis- charge entirely ceased within a few days of the extraction of the foreign body. (b) On June 13, 1879, a lady brought a little girl to see me, at the request of the late Dr. Fergus, on account of a slight discharge from the right nostril. This had been going on for six months, and during that time the child had been observed to snore somewhat and to be rather restless iu sleep. Exploration detected a hard foreign body, which, on extraction, proved to be a metallic shoe-button. (c) Four years ago a girl, five years old, was brought to see me by her parents on account of discharge from the left nostril of more than three years’ duration, giving a distinctly disagreeable odor to the breath. I probed the nostril as well as I could in the case of a restless child, but could feel no foreign body. I wrote, however, to my friend Dr. Sewell, of Helensburgh, whose patient she was, that I felt sure a foreign body was the cause of the mischief, and that it ought to be carefully searched for, if need be after the administration of an anaesthetic. He wrote me lately iu regard to the ease as follows : “ I got it out a week afterwards. The extraction took place when she was over five years of age; she must have put it iu when between two and three years of age. The body was a cherry-stone, so completely covered over Avith thick, firm, almost fibrinous deposit, that the pi’obe iu touching it did not convey the feeling which one usually expects iu the case of a hard sub- stance. I hooked it out because I saw it moving when touched by the probe.” Each of these three cases made a good and rapid recovery on the foreign body being removed. In each the presence of such a body was unsuspected prior to my being consulted ; in each the “ disease” (for all were supposed to be sidfering from a disease) Avas entirely confined to one nostril; in each, too, there A\'as a purulent discharge of a .stinking character, of Avhich the amount and degree of fetor varied Avith the character of the foreign body rather than Avith the duration of its resi- dence in the nostril. In the first case, although it AA-as of only six Avccks’ standing, the stench, discomfort, and acrid discharge were as