Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... notice has already been taken of the numerous diseases which have been confused with chronic intussusception. (See page 237.) The confusion between acute or subacute intussusception and dysentery or enteritis has been of frequent occurrence. CHAPTER XXIV. THE TREATMENT. The subject of the treatment of cases of intestinal obstruction, with its extensive bearings and its many vexed questions, may be most conveniently considered under two general headings: 1. The methods of treatment available for intestinal obstruction. 2. The special treatment of individual forms of ob struction. THE METHODS OF TREATMENT AVAILABLE FOR INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION. Non-operative measures: the feeding: of the patient.--This is matter which demands a little more attention than it has at present received. In many examples of acute obstruction the progress of the case is so rapid, and death appears so early, that the question of supporting the patient by food does not require to be entertained. In less rapid cases, however, this question becomes a prominent one, and in subacute cases it obtains a very considerable degree of importance. Certainly in not a few instances one of the factors in the exhaustion that leads to death depends upon the patient's inability to take or to retain food. When the case has lasted four or five or six days the patient's prospect of recovery is compromised by the debility induced by want of nourishment, and this debility may seriously modify the result of any operation. In not a few instances, more especially in cases of intussusception, a process of spontaneous relief is found to be nearly complete at the time of death and to have been arrested by a fatal exhaustion, to the production of which an inability to take food has no doubt...