Case of tumour originated in the soft palate, and protruding into the isthmus of the fauces, removed by operation / by Kelburne King, M.D.

  • King, Murdoch Kelburne, 1823-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of tumour originated in the soft palate, and protruding into the isthmus of the fauces, removed by operation / by Kelburne King, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    The symptoms were felt to be urgent by the patient, and I therefore explained to him that unless some method could be found of removing the tumour, there was no other way of affording relief He was quite convinced of the dangerous nature of the malady, and expressed himself as ready to submit to whatever operation might be proposed for his relief. Eventually he was admitted into the Infirmary, on September 27th. My fist idea was to divide the inferior maxilla at the symphysis, and to remove the tumour by incisions made within the mouth, but the impossibility of defining its pos- terior connections deterred me; ultimately I devised and performed the following operation :— I determined to get at the tumour by laying open the face from the angle of the mouth to a little above the angle of the jaw, then sawing through the ramus to ascertain whether sufiicient space could be obtained to detach the tumour from its connections, if not, to remove what portion of the body of the bone might be necessary, and, in case of the great vessels being, implicated in the posterior connections, to command the possible haemorrhage by first of all placing on the common carotid a ligature to be tightened at will. On October 15th, the man was placed under the influ- ence of chloroform, and the usual incision for ligature of the common carotid artery was made along the edge of the sterno-mastoid muscle. Here the first difiiculty of the operation occurred. The patient could not be fully placed under the in- fluence of chloroform, in consequence of the diffi- cult respiration which it produced. The strug- gling which resulted, and the rapid respiration, made it very difficult to expose the arter}^. In