The Old Dominion Journal of Medicine and Surgery Volume 14 (Paperback)

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: trie lavage. Permanent tubes in stomach (preferably passed through a nostril) and in rectum merit more general adoption. This general plan of treatment, irrespective of operation, should be maintained just a little longer than absolutely necessary, then after the patient has been normal a few days begin administering water by mouth in small quantities, and increasing gradually to liquid diet and soft eggs, avoiding corbo- hydrates. As soon as it is evident that peristalsis will not reawaken the inflammation a dose of castor oil may introduce a general diet. Peristalsis should now be increased and kept up by frequent ingestion of solid food and repeated cathartics the object being to stretch or break recent adhesions before they become organized. These patients should also be warned of the dangers of food and cathartics in acute abdominal upsets, and of the necessity for prompt, efficient surgical attention under such conditions. CARCINOMATA OF THE GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT. William J. Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., in the Buffalo Medical Journal for January, 1912, reviewing 1264 cases of carcinomata of the gastro-intestinal tract operated on at St. Mary's Hospital, states that 863 involved the stomach, 219 the large intestine, 168 the rectum and 14 the small intestine. In other words, cancer of the stomach constitutes about two- thirds of all carcinomata of the gastro-intestinal tract. In the gastric cases it was possible to do the radical operation in only 307 cases or 34.9 per cent., in the cases involving the small intestine (14) 5, were submitted to the radical operation or 35.7; while those involving the large intestine and rectum three-fourths were submitted to the radical operation. In other words only about 1-3 of all patients submitted for operation are operated on w...