An account of one hundred and ten consecutive cases of abdominal section performed since the 1st of November, 1880 : read before the Midland Medical Society, November 2nd, 1881 / by Lawson Tait.

  • Tait, Lawson, 1845-1899.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of one hundred and ten consecutive cases of abdominal section performed since the 1st of November, 1880 : read before the Midland Medical Society, November 2nd, 1881 / by Lawson Tait. 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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    Four of the cases of single cystoma were pregnant at the time of the operation, and all recovered. In two cases I operated in the course of acute peritonitis, with completely successful results. There are, of course, many of the cases having features of special interest, such as suppurating and gangrenous tumours, and operations performed during pregnancy, but these have now been reduced by extended experience to the compass of ordinary treatment, so that I need not trouble you with their details. One case, however (74), deserves some brief notice, for there I had to deal with a rotten, gangrenous, and adherent tumour, which gave me trouble of a most unusual and un- expected kind, which I had to meet as best I could, and I am glad to say I did successfully. In turning out the stinking, rotten mass, I suddenly caused a most alarming haemorrhage, which, of course, I controlled with Koeberle's forceps, and proceeded with the removal. I could find no pedicle, but the point from which the hsBoiorrhage came was undoubtedly the pedicle which I had torn across before I had recognised it. When Mr. Harmar tried to tie its bleeding points, the more he tied the more it bled. The cautery equally failed me, and I was at my wits' end. Nine pairs of forceps were fastened upon something in the pelvis—I knew not what, - and from it I dared not move them. I therefore closed the wound over them, went up to the hospital next morning, and reopened it Then, in fear and trembling, I released the forceps, one pair after another. No bleeding came. I fastened in a drainage-tube, the patient recovered slowly, and went home on August 9. I now come to a group of twenty-one cases of removal of the uterine appendages for various conditions, and these had best be divided into two groups, according to the nature of the two leading symptoms—haemorrhage and pain. This division, however, like every other, is unsatisfactory, because it is quite impossible in some of the cases to say to which group they ought properly to belong, for pain and haemor- rhage were often so pronouncedly in combination as to afford a double justification for surgical interference. I must, however, enter here the protest which I have again and again advanced, so far in vain, against these operations being styled oophorectomies, or cases of Battey's opera- tion I do so, in the first place, because I have coiupletely established the tact that removal of the Fallopian tubes is quite as necessary as removal of the ovaries ; in fact, I think it is far more necessary in all cases, for upon the tubes, it seems to me, the periodic function of menstruation exists, and ovulation and menstruation are wholly independent the one of the other. As Dr. Battey limited his definition of