Surgical Experience of Chloroform Author:James Miller 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: 52 USEFUL IN IRRITABLE STRICTURE. of the old and original injury might even at that date have been effected. XXX. ANESTHESIA LENDS MUCH ASSISTANCE IN THE T... more »REATMENT OF IRRITABLE STRICTURE. Every surgeon has had ample proofs given him of there being often much irritability and much spasm in the male urethra, when the seat of an old standing and tough stricture; and he knows full well, that he and his bougie find these depraved conditions most troublesome as well as most obstinate foes, in the treatment of the main disease. So sensitive sometimes is the part, that the patient cannot bear the instrument, and insists on its removal, ere ever it has reached the strictured portion. Or, again, it may painfully pass a certain length ; and then a spasm comes, quite insuperable— with safety—as if declaring that though the patient might bear the instrument, the stricture will not. In such cases, there are a variety of means whereby we may seek to overcome the difficulty. But there are none so good as chloroform. A gentleman, of the naval profession, about midlife, had long laboured under such a stricture. In London, and elsewhere, he had made many attempts at cure; always being compelled to stop short, however, by the intense suffering and spasm, which the use of bougies, however cautiously employed, never failed to induce; and, besides, the pain was apt to continue long, accompanied with shivering, fever, and general distress. At last, he gave up all thoughts of cure ; and tended himself as he best might, with a view only towards palliation. Hearing of chloroform, hope revived; and he came to Edinburgh. He was thrown into a state of deep anaesthesia, and with but little trouble I at once introduced a bougie—No. 5 of the scale. The urethra felt ragged and rough ; and two tight strict...« less