Guy's Hospital Gazette Volume 19 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ... there they are seized with the ambition to become specialists in laryngology, because they find themselves so peculiarly skilful in seeing larynxes, and applying local applications thereto. But they forget that those upon whom they operate are highly-trained patients. In England we have nothing of the sort; but in Vienna there are troupes of patients under a sort of circus-master who, for small fees, will I allow their diseased conditions to be thoroughly investigated. I remember an old lady who used to take coloured beads on the ends of pieces of cotton and suddenly swallow them into various parts of her larynx, and would then allow a student, for a fee, to remove these beads from her larynx by means of forceps. While one side of her tongue kept the mirror in place, the other side of the tongue conducted the forceps down on to the bead, and the student removed it with the greatest possible pleasure, and felt himself indeed to be a budding specialist in laryngology. But when the student comes back to his own country he finds it is all he can do to see into the larynx of the untrained native. It is impossible for you to make too frequent use of the laryngoscope upon all sorts of patients if you wish to be prepared to see ihe vocal cords of one who is desperately ill and has had no preparatory training for this difficult manipulation. The importance of diagnosing by this means laryngeal obstruction may be brought home to you if I relate three striking mistakes with regard to laryngeal obstruction which have come under my observation during the course of my connection with this hospital. The first case was one in which an apparently unnecessary tracheotomy was performed in a child who subsequently died. The child was admitted with a croupy cough and signs of ...