Observations on the surgical pathology of the larynx and trachea, chiefly with a view to illustrate the affections of those organs which may require the operation of bronchotomy: including remarks on croup, cynanche laryngea, injuries by swallowing acids and boiling water, foreign bodies in the windpipe, asphyxia, wounds, etc / [William Henry Porter].

  • Porter, William Henry, 1790-1861.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the surgical pathology of the larynx and trachea, chiefly with a view to illustrate the affections of those organs which may require the operation of bronchotomy: including remarks on croup, cynanche laryngea, injuries by swallowing acids and boiling water, foreign bodies in the windpipe, asphyxia, wounds, etc / [William Henry Porter]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CONCLUSION. | IN the course of the investigations to which I was led during the construction of the foregoing pages, I found, though with- out much regret, that fewer of my observations could lay claim to originality than I had at first supposed. This circumstance has not deterred me from laying this little work before the pub- lic, not only with a view to spare the student’s labour in search- ing through a multiplicity of books, but for the purpose of arranging the morbid affections to which the larynx and trachea are subject, and discriminating between those in which surgical aid may be available, and those to which it is altogether inap- plicable. Nothing is more common than to see a patient lan- guishing with laryngeal disease until life is nearly extinct, and then undergoing the pain and inconvenience of an operation that must of necessity be hopeless; and hence it happens, not only that bronchotomy is considered as uncertain in its results, but that surgeons are unwilling to undertake it unless they can justify themselves by considering it as a last resource. I be- lieve that most of this uncertainty in practice arises from a want of arrangement; from not having those cases sepa- rated in which operation may prove serviceable, from those which must inevitably have a fatal termination; and therefore it will be found that I have rather endeavoured to demonstrate the inutility of operating when particular symptoms are present, than even to encourage the employment of the knife under other circumstances. In pursuit of the views which I had long since taken of the subject, I have, as far as opportunity served, e