BRISTOL GENERAL HOSPITAL.
Transcript of BRISTOL GENERAL HOSPITAL.
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26th.-Patient better. Joint painful and enlarged. Cod-liver oil, two drachms three times a day. Obscure deepfluctuation detected on the inner side of the knee, extendingupwards above the joint; skin erythematous; pain onpressure.
29th.—A deep incision reached the abscess, and about twoounces of pus were removed. Still the joint was not opened.Poultice applied. The cicatrix where the former abscesswas opened has now quite healed.
Nov. 20th.—Wounds healed. Slight movement in thejoint.
Dec. Ist.-Knee strapped with soap plaster. Patientwalks about on crutches. Knee slightly flexed, but capableof considerable movement. He can also put the foot to theground.4th.-Made an out-patient.
BRISTOL GENERAL HOSPITAL.POISONING BY CONCENTRATED SULPHURIC ACID ; RECOVERY.
(Under the care of Dr. FRIPP.)JOHN C-, aged forty, was admitted on August 4th,
1868, at 7.30 A.M. He went to his work about five o’clockin the morning, being employed in a bone-manure manu-factory. He had been at work a short time when, feeling ’,thirsty, he drank by mistake from a stone bottle containing ’,,oil of vitriol of the concentrated form, such as is used forreducing the bones. His head being thrown well back inthe act of drinking, he was involuntarily compelled toswallow a portion, but spat out instantly as much of theacid as possible. He states that he immediately ran to thewater-tap, and drank profusely of water, feeling an intensepain and burning sensation down his gullet, and in hisepigastrium. He vomited many times, the vomited mattereffervescing on coming in contact with the dust. Presentlya fellow-workman came to him, and with his assistance hewalked to the hospital, a distance of about a mile. Hethen complained of great pain in the epigastrium, wasvomiting a clearish fluid, and had a burning sensation inthe mouth, fauces, and gullet. The skin on the upper andlower lips was scorched by the acid, and was of a reddish-brown colour. The mouth, tongue, lips, fauces, and pharynx,as far as could be seen, had a whitened and sodden ap-pearance.. There was not great difficulty in swallowing, nordid the respiration seem particularly impeded. Pulse 76;skin rather cold. Was in a great state of fright. At 9 P.M.,the pulse was 88; there was not so much pain at the epigas-trium, but more pain and difficulty in swallowing. Skinmoist, and perspiring somewhat.
Aug., 5th.-Passed a fair night, pain and burning sensa-tion continuing. No vomiting, but a very copious spittingof ropy saliva and mucus.6th.-Going on well; bowels acted twice; stools natural
in appearance. Pain in epigastrium diminishing; mouthshedding its mucous membrane.
Treatment.-On his arrival at the hospital, a large dose ofbicarbonate of potash in solution was at once administered,which produced instant vomiting of a large quantity of fluidin a state of great effervescence. After a short time two tea-spoonfuls of olive oil were given. He was put to bed withhot bottles to his feet. Ordered to have an egg beaten upwith milk, and to take at short intervals milk and lime-water. Warm fomentations to his epigastric region. Hewas kept on milk diet for four days, when, from some familyreasons, he left the hospital, although he was still very ill,and was fully warned of the risk he incurred by so doing.He, however, recovered completely.Remarks.-It is certain that he must have swallowed a large
mouthful of the concentrated acid; and though, under thecircumstances, it is difficult to estimate exactly the quantity,yet, taking into consideration the position he was in, in theact of drinking, Dr. Fripp thinks he could not have swal-lowed less than half an ounce, and this, too, under theworst condition-viz., on an empty stomach. The solublealkali seemed to neutralise at once a quantity of free acid,which previous frequent vomiting had failed to eject. Di-luted solutions of the alkaline carbonates possess this ad-vantage over the more insoluble ones, as magnesia : that, byreason of their solubility, they are brought into immediatecontact with all parts of the stomach. And one apparent
disadvantage, viz., rapid evolution of carbonic acid, is pro-bably an advantage, for very rapid distension of the stomachwith gas gives rise to immediate vomiting, which, in fact,occurred in this instance; and the possibility of rupture ofan eroded stomach from distension is more than compensatedfor by the speedy neutralisation of such a corrosive as con-centrated sulphuric acid.
Reviews and Notices of Books.A Practical Treatise on Bright’s Diseases of the liictrveys. By
T. GRAINGER STEWART, M.D., F.R.S.E. Edinburgh eAdam and Charles Black. 1868.
MANY excellent works on Bright’s Disease have beenrecently published; still we can scarcely have too manyaccurate descriptions of morbid appearances and carefully-reported cases, such as we find in the work before us, forthese must always be instructive, and increase our know-ledge of the malady, enabling us to distinguish its formswith greater precision at the bedside.
Dr. Stewart adopts a classification which, modified oneway or another, is coming into general use, and dividesBright’s disease into three forms-the inflammatory, thewaxy or amyloid, and the cirrhotic or contracting form. Inthe treatment of the acute and earlier stages of the inflam-matory form he strongly advocates the employment of diu-retics, holding that the danger to life results from the oc-clusion of the tubules, and hence the best practice is toclear them out by a free stream of urine. In this, both asto the practice and its rationale, he agrees with Bennett andDickinson. He is satisfied that, if the disorganised mate-rial is swept away, a new epithelium is formed, otherwise itis slowly absorbed, and, tubule by tubule, the organ atro-phies. Hence he remarks that, even if it were possible toeliminate all the water and urinary ingredients by thebowels and skin, by doing so no ultimate gain would beeffected, as the fons et origo mali would remain untouched.
Dr. Stewart’s valuable observations on waxy degenerationof the kidneys, which have been already laid before theprofession, constitute him an authority on the subject, sothat the chapters devoted to the consideration of this dis-ease will be read with much interest. With regard to itscausation, his views are diametrically opposed to those ofDr. Dickinson. He believes that it is chiefly due tosyphilis, and denies that it is caused by protracted suppu-ration, on the ground that he has never seen suppuration,independent of tuberculosis or caries and necrosis, lead tothe disease. Be this as it may, it is a significant fact,shown by statistics, that phthisis with vomicæ, caries andnecrosis, and other affections involving a long-continueddrain of pus, are the antecedents of by far the largest num-ber of cases of waxy degeneration of the kidneys.
Dr. Stewart does not regard the cirrhotic form of thedisease as resulting from inflammatory action, but believesit to be due to a simple hypertrophy of the connectivetissue of the organ.
In cases of indurated kidney consequent on heart
disease, Dr. Stewart has found that the tubules were as.much affected as the stroma, so that they cannot be re-garded as instances of cirrhotic degeneration.The two concluding chapters are on combined waxy and
inflammatory, and on combined cirrhotic and inflammatorydisease. There are also three interesting supplementarychapters on simple fatty degeneration, acute atrophy of thekidney co-existing with acute atrophy of the liver, and onthe nature of waxy degeneration.The work is illustrated with several plates of the micro-
scopic appearances of the morbid textures, which are re-