Some points in practical surgery suggested by the study of the life and work of John Hunter : being the Hunterian lecture delivered before the Hunterian Society of London, February 26, 1902 / by Reginald Harrison.

  • Harrison, Reginald, 1837-1908.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some points in practical surgery suggested by the study of the life and work of John Hunter : being the Hunterian lecture delivered before the Hunterian Society of London, February 26, 1902 / by Reginald Harrison. 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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    hospital with full retention. The bladder was emptied of blood and urine with a catheter and a small lithotrity aspirator. On the following day the amount of distension and pain was as much as before. As the bleeding was unchecked and proceeded from the strictured portion of the deep urethra, I performed a perineal section, and also divided the stricture. A large gum-elastic incompressible drainage-tube was then passed into the bladder, and about two pints of clots, blood, and urine, were evacuated. The tube was removed in seven days, and the patient left the hospital in three weeks with the wound soundly healed. His stricture has been greatly benefited, and he now has a full-sized bougie passed when he applies as an out-patient. As in Hunter’s case, these clots would probably have killed had they not been removed. Hunter had a good deal to say in reference to catheters and their uses. In fact, we may trace various forms of instruments at present in vogue as emanating from him. In some of his observations on the altered direction of the urethra which the enlarged prostate brings about, we may recognise, for instance, the origin of the coudee catheter, though I believe it is commonly associated with the name of the French surgeon, Mercier. Hunter says, when speaking of the effects of en- largement of the lateral lobes of the prostate : “ A small portion of it, which lies behind the very beginning of the urethra, swells forward like a point as it were into the bladder, acting like a valve to the mouth of the urethra. It sometimes increases so much as to form a tumour, projecting into the bladder some inches. This projection turns or bends the urethra forwards, becoming an obstruction to the passage of a catheter, bougie, or any such instrument, and it often raises the sound over a