Arterial ligation for irremovable cancer of pelvic organs : technic adapted and amplified / by William Seaman Bainbridge.

  • Bainbridge, William Seaman, 1870-1947.
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Arterial ligation for irremovable cancer of pelvic organs : technic adapted and amplified / by William Seaman Bainbridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/36 (page 16)
    in the pelvis. Ligation not only facilitates the removal of glands between the uterus and the re- ceptaculum chyli, but it in a measure shuts off the vascular avenues of absorption of toxic prod¬ ucts. Cachexia is thus lessened, and the patient is rendered more amenable to measures which tend to promote elimination. This paves the way for the general tonic treatment, which is of little or no avail while the system is thoroughly clogged and poisoned by the absorption of toxic products. In many cases the patient is dying not so much from the cancer alone, as from the absorption of poisons, some of which do not emanate from the cancer. In the effort to relive suffering, morphin is often given in enormous doses. As a conse¬ quence, there is a veritable locking up within the body of poisonous products which now, even more than under other circumstances, need to be elimi¬ nated. Furthermore, in the effort to keep up the patient’s vitality, large quantities of milk, with its more or less indigestible casein-content, are given, which it is impossible for the patient to assimilate or eliminate. Thus, well-meant attempts to aid are in reality merely hastening the end. How much better, then, in suitable cases, to ligate the vessels as described, thus obviating the danger of hemorrhage while opening up the avenues of es¬ cape of poisons, and fitting the patient for re¬ ceiving the fullest benefits from whatever medi¬ cinal, dietetic or hygienic measures may be em¬ ployed. Y. Facilitating the Discharge of Pus and Ne¬ crotic Tissue.—It is of the utmost importance that a free outlet for pus and necrotic tissue be main¬ tained. In many eases this is impossible without danger of fatal or exhausting hemorrhage, and consequently it is no uncommon thing to find acetone or other styptic or cauterant agents ap- * plied to the cervix, so constricting the outlet that the pus and necrotic debris are dammed up in the uterine cavity. Sometimes, by inserting the