Observations on Strictures of the Rectum Author:William M. White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: are felt to he more or less thickened, and not uncommonly in the cavity of the stricture, there is a hard, irregular ulcer. Although this disease has in its earl... more »y stages, little influence upon the constitution, yet, when it has made a further progress, the powers of the constitution become very much weakened, great emaciation generally takes place, and the patient is destroyed. In the other species of stricture, produced by the contraction of the sphincters of the anus, the contraction is found on examination to be at the anus, or the very lower extremity of the rectum; the inner membrane of the rectum is discovered to be sound, and the general health is not impaired." In employing the term, common stricture, Dr. Baillie evidently means schirrus of the rectum, and does not in the least allude to a simple state of permanent contraction; as the description and prognosis which he has given of the former, will be found to differ from the latter form of disease in several material circumstances, which will be noticed hereafter. Sometimes when a stricture is within reach of the finger, it feels like a membranous ring, and where there is considerable pressure from an accumulation of the faeces above, a regular contraction and dilatation of the muscular coat of the intestine may be also distinctly felt. Though this kind of stricture is completely permanent, it may I think with strict propriety be termedspasmodic, as it is not attended by any sensible thickening or induration in the coats of the intestine, but merely a circular contraction of its muscular fibres. When a stricture of this nature (or simple stricture) has existed some time in the rectum, so as to render the passage of the faeces difficult, the coats of the intestine frequently become very much distended above, and a po...« less