Medical century Volume 13

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: ...M. D., WASHINGTON, D. C. Read before the Washington Homoeopathic Medical Society, May 10, 1905. It was scarcely to be expected that anything new or interesting could be written concerning so trite a subject as that of the non-febrile disorders of the small intestines, constipation and diarrhoea., the two most common ailments with which the physician has to deal. So common, so ordinary, that the laity considers itself entirely competent to treat them, to the great profit of the druggist and the manufacturer of liver pills, and, sooner or later, to the profit of the doctor also, by making chronics, who eventually require skilled treatment. A common, every-day subject, difficult by reason of its very commonness. It was difficult to keep the road, to avoid wandering in the fields of "specific infections," for instance, or the "summer diarrhoea of children." or "auto-intoxication," to avoid encroaching upon the territory of my neighbors, the stomach, the pancreas, the-colon. But the path had been laid out for me; you may see for yourself how straightly I walked it. The duodenum, notwithstanding its peculiar histological structure, its fixed anatomical position and its relation to the pancreas and gall bladder through their respective ducts, is apparently subject to no disorders which are not common to the other portions of the small intestine. The presence of jaundice, and a dull pain on pressure in the right hypochondriac region, will indicate the involvement of the duodenum in an intestinal inflammation, but the diseased, process is rarely confined here, and as the etiology, pathology and treatment are similar throughout, we will consider diseases of the duodenum included when we speak of enteritis. Enteritis may be defined as an ...