An improved method of treating strictures in the urethra / By Thomas Whately.

  • Whately, Thomas, -1821.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An improved method of treating strictures in the urethra / By Thomas Whately. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/250 (page 9)
    vanced stricture is longer in emptying itself than in health, now parts with it’s contents only by drops. Having made these general remarks on strictures, and on the effects produced by them, let us next attend to the state of the inner membrane of the urethra at the stric- tured part. The true knowledge of this will greatly assist the practitioner. The state of this part in the dead body has been frequently ascertained, and Mr. Hunter’s observation, that a stricture is harder in it’s consistence than any other part of the urethra*, has been confirmed by repeated dissections. I can- not think, however, that we have been suf- ficiently attentive to a strictured state of this part in the living body, or to the causes producing this state. Can a muscular canal, which is naturally in an easy and relaxed state, be considered as free from some dis- eased affection, when a portion of it is un- naturally contracted? I apprehend not; for whatever is the cause, that first excited the contiaction, this cause in a certain degree continues to operate, till proper means are used to counteract it; inasmuch as the con- traction seldom remains stationary, but ^e- * Hunter on the Venereal Disease, p. 113.