The past and present treatment of intestinal obstructions, reviewed, with an improved treatment indicated / by Hugh Owen Thomas.

  • Thomas, Hugh Owen, 1834-1891.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The past and present treatment of intestinal obstructions, reviewed, with an improved treatment indicated / by Hugh Owen Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/228 (page 15)
    some simple laxative, such as castor oil, acts with singular efficacy. In aid of this treatment, hot baths, fomentations, or ice or electricity to the surface of the belly, and voluminous enemata of gruel or of water may severally be employed. If those measures are without avail, it is generally advisable to give the bowels rest, and to relieve pain by the repeated use of adequate doses of opium or of belladonna; the persistence in which treatment will, by relieving spasm, or otherwise promoting the return of some length of bowel to a com- paratively healthy condition, not unfrequently result, after a shorter or longer time, in an effectual and sufficient evacuation. If this treatment fail in its turn, it may be necessary again to solicit the action of the bowels by the employment of purgative medicines, enemata, and the like. Such is the routine which must be generally followed in cases of simple obstruction, in which the cause of obstruction is obscure ; and in many cases also even when the cause is distinctly ascertained. Here we are advised to commence v/ith powerful purgatives, and to persist in their use until we have evidence of their injurious action, then mild laxatives can be tried, and to aid all these by hot fomentations, electricity, and enemata, failing in all these, opium and belladonna are to be given; after which if they fail, a return to purgatives and enemata, &c., is counselled. In fact, it may be noticed that there is, in the treatment recommended, an utter absence of any systematic method based on the etiology of the difficulty under consideration. These lesions are of such serious import to life that it were better to prac- tice an expectant method, than to incur any risk by giving remedies not based on rational ground or suc- cessful clinical or experimental observation. Many cases have been reported as having recovered even after the most inefficient treatment, which to my mind