Acute Dilatation of the Stomach

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: ACUTE DILATATION OF THE STOMACH Acute dilatation of the stomach has up to the present scarcely received the attention it deserves. It is of the greatest interest to both physicians and surgeons, since it may be met with by either at times when it is least expected. In medicine acute dilatation may be...
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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: ACUTE DILATATION OF THE STOMACH Acute dilatation of the stomach has up to the present scarcely received the attention it deserves. It is of the greatest interest to both physicians and surgeons, since it may be met with by either at times when it is least expected. In medicine acute dilatation may be occasionally met with as a primary condition, but more often it occurs as a complication of some pre-existing disease. In surgery the condition may follow operations upon any part of the body, and may rapidly cause a fatal termination of cases which otherwise appear to be doing well. Typical cases are characterized by their sudden onset, by the vomiting of enormous quantities of fluid, and by very severe general symptoms, which too often terminate . fatally within a few days. In this work severe cases are taken as the type; but it is probable that, if looked for, all degrees of severity will be found between the slighter forms, which are frequently noted as accompanying acute illnesses, and the more severe and rapidly fatal cases. It is also, I think, clear that the condition is not so rare as has generally been supposed. Acute dilatation of the stomach in its most severe form was first fully described in this country by HiltonFagge, who recorded four cases, two of which had come under his personal observation. I have during the past three years made post-mortem examinations upon four cases in which death was immediately due to this condition, and upon a fifth in which the dilatation occurred as a complication of fracture of the base of the skull and spine. Before referring to the cases recorded by others, I will give a brief account of those which have come under my own notice. CASES. Case I.?Acute dilatation supervening upon a chronic dilatation. The patient ...