Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment — John Shaqi
Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic TreatmentTilden, J. H. (John Henry)
Science
Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment
Tilden, J. H. (John Henry)
Appendicitis
Children troubled with constipation will sometimes be taken with
fever and pain in the right iliac fossa and, on examination, a
fullness will be found; the sensitiveness will not be so great but
that an examination can be made and a sausage shaped tumor may be
outlined; of course, the disease will be named appendicitis and this
is enough to scare a whole neighborhood, and the child will be
carted off to a hospital and operated upon for appendicitis.
If the child is left alone, given no food, and ice put on the
sensitive parts if the temperature is 103 degree F., or hot
applications if the temperature is less, the tenderness will
probably go away in two or three days; if it does not, an abscess
will form and empty into the cecum. If the child is fed, and the
tumor manipulated--subjected to unnecessary examinations--the
abscess may be made to burrow down toward the groin, which should be
avoided for it is a very undesirable complication. The first abscess
is typhlitic, the second is perityphlitic. The first may form
without the aid of bruising in the manipulation of repeated
examinations, but the second must be forced by bad management. The
latter abscess, I have reason to believe, is the former abscess
driven, by repeated manipulations, to burrow downwards instead of
opening into the cocum.
Fecal abscess, arising from ulceration of the colon, may be mistaken
for appendicitis. There is a localized swelling, immovable in
breathing or when pressed upon, and having a tympanitic sound on
percussion over it with dull sound on pressure and heavy stroke.
The symptoms of appendicitis are: Pain in the front, lower, right
side of the abdomen. It is paroxysmal and caused in the main by
peristalsis--the regular action characteristic of the sewer function
of the bowels, which is for the purpose of forcing the contents of
the intestines onward to the outlet, and which ordinarily is carried
on without pain; but, in bowel obstructions of any kind, the onward
flow of the bowel contents is cut off resulting in great pain where
there is much irritability, for irritation of any kind always
increases this expulsive movement. Food, taken in health, stimulates
this contraction and if taken when there is inflammation--enteritis,
colitis or inflammation of any part--the contraction is increased
and necessarily painful. Think of the pain that the subject of
diarrhea has, then imagine what that pain must be if there should be
obstruction so that the fecal matter could not pass. That is as near
as I can describe what the pain of appendicitis is. Anything that
will stimulate these contractions will throw the patient into great
distress. Food or drugs will cause pain, and water, the first few
days of the illness, will do the same.
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