Case of three remarkable tumours extirpated from the nose : communicated in a letter to David Hosack / by P.S. Townsend.

  • Townsend, Peter S. (Peter Solomon), 1796-1849.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of three remarkable tumours extirpated from the nose : communicated in a letter to David Hosack / by P.S. Townsend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    out the Bahamas, as well as in many other parts of the West-India islands; and so extraordinary and unique were they considered, that he was in his travels every where proverbially designated by the cogno- men of Big-Nose Russel. The sneering and sarcastic observations many persons had unfeelingly made upon his misfortune, had for the last ten years, he told me, almost prevented him from going abroad. There was no pain or irritability on handling the diseased mass, but the weight of it at night was so unpleasant as to inconvenience his respiration, unless lying on his back; in which posture, also, the nose interfering with the mouth, would cause him fre- quently to spring from bed during sleep, with a sense of strangulation. The weight may be imagined from the deep wrinkles upon the forehead and around the eyes, occasioned by the incessant and powerful ac- tion of the occipito-frontalis and adjoining muscles, in their effort to sustain the tumours. After having proposed the operation to the patient, and with much difficulty made him understand that no serious consequences were to be apprehended from it, he went home to Abaco, and in a few weeks returned to Nassau, for the purpose of having it ac- complished. In the meanwhile, the proposition I had made be- came generally known; and on his return to Nassau, most of his friends, and one or two practitioners of