Essays In Pastoral MedicineWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Religion
Essays In Pastoral Medicine
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
First aid in illness and injury; Medicine
In my opinion he may operate with much more solid probability than
that which exists in Case II. If the argument is more for the death of
the foetus than for its life, this, of course, strengthens the
permissibility of the operation.
(1) The danger to the mother is exactly the same,_caeteris paribus_,
as in Case II.; (2) the foetus is only probably alive. An actual
danger to life is opposed to the probable life of a materially unjust
aggressor; therefore the surgeon may probably operate at once.
Probable here is used in the technical sense of the term.
Case IV. The following case is given because a similar one was
proposed in the articles in the _American Ecclesiastical Review_, but
it is not a practical case.
The surgeon, after consultation, does not know whether the growth in a
woman's pelvis is a malignant tumour or a sac containing an
extrauterine foetus. If the growth is a malignant tumour, the woman is
in actual and certain danger of life, her death is a mere matter of
time if a malignant tumour is not removed, and the sooner the tumour
is removed the better. If operation is deferred, metastases of the
tumour will have occurred, and operation will be too late. The
indication when we find a malignant tumour is, if it is not already
too late to operate, to take it out at once.
If the surgeon thinks that the growth may possibly be a foetus, and he
puts off the operation until a time when certain signs of pregnancy
should be present to establish a diagnosis of gestation, or their lack
to establish a diagnosis of tumour, it would almost surely be too late
to operate in the event the growth turned out to be a malignant
tumour.
As has been said, the case is not practical, because malignant tumours
of the tube are so very rare that they are not to be looked for,--only
one or two have been observed. {36} Malignant tumours about the tube
should be diagnosed. Supposing, however, the case to stand, it offers
in favour of operation a probabilism stronger than that in any case
except Case I., because the mother's danger is graver, and the
argument concerning the foetus is the same as that in Case III.
Case V. Suppose a doubtful case like Case III. or Case IV., but after
the surgeon has opened the abdomen he finds a foetus evidently alive.
This is an improbable but a possible case. Case V. then becomes like
Case II. with the addition of another grave danger to the lives of
both the mother and the foetus, which is the coeliotomy already
performed. The suggestion that the surgeon can leave the woman, back
out of the case, is absurd. If he closes the abdomen, the coeliotomy
may cause tubal abortion, the wound might have to be opened again in a
few hours or a few days, and the mother would be left in much greater
peril than she was in Case II. For the reasons already given, he
should go on with the operation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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