A treatise on the pneumatic aspiration of morbid fluids : a medico-chirurgical method of diagnosis and treatment of cysts and abscesses of the liver - strangulated hernia - retention of urine - pericarditis - pleurisy - hydarthrosis, &c / by Dr. Georges Dieulafoy.

  • Dieulafoy, Georges, 1839-1911.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the pneumatic aspiration of morbid fluids : a medico-chirurgical method of diagnosis and treatment of cysts and abscesses of the liver - strangulated hernia - retention of urine - pericarditis - pleurisy - hydarthrosis, &c / by Dr. Georges Dieulafoy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I pointed ont tliat the same process was applicable to hydarthrosis, pericarditis, acute and chronic pleurisy, to various kinds of cysts,—in one word, to effusions of every description, serous, kæmatic, or purulent, which can be searcked for, found, and exkausted. The truly important point, which I made prominent in my communication to the Academy of Medicine, was the principle on which this method, which includes the treatment of ail pathological fluids, is based ; and this principle is inséparable from two conditions, namely :—(1) The use of extremely fine hollow needles ; (2) the création of a previous vacuum. The création of a previous vacuum : everything lies in this. This idea, which is so simple and of so easy an ap- plication, differentiates aspiration, at the outset, from the methods which preceded it. Since the time of Galien and his pyulcon,* surgeons of ail âges hâve heen groping about without actually discovering that which they stood in need of. Their researches, however, gave birth to various kinds of suction apparatus, such as syringes, syphons, pumps, and other instruments, which were in turn adopted and laid aside. M. Bouchut, in a learned essay,t bas considered the question from an historical point of view ; he bas informed us of the numerous alterations and modifications made in these apparatus from the time of Galien till now, and he bas shown their insufficiency. After the subject had been abandoned for a long time, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the reappearance of the pyulcon with Jean de Vigo, the application of the trocar with Drouin, and the use of needles with Mick. In our days it bas been attempted, by changing its name and appearance, to re- establish the pyulcon, but in vain ; it became a bladder in the hands of Laûgier, a trocar with M. Van den Corput, and a syringe with M. Guérin. Its form changed, but the * Pyulcon from nvov, pus, and ?Xya), I draw ont. f De la Thoracentèse par Aspiration dans la pleurésie purulente et dans l’hydropneumo thorax. Paris, 1871.