The urine is usually scanty and high-colored, but it does not often contain either albumen or casts. This statement is presumably untrue of the cases in which Bright's disease preceded the peritonitis and is supposed to be the cause of it—a variety of the disease with which I have already declared my scanty acquaintance. The urine is often voided with difficulty, and sometimes retained, so that resort to a catheter becomes necessary.
The symptoms of this disease are not invariable. In one case the inflation of the bowels is only enough to be perceptible; in another, as I have said, it becomes a distressing symptom, while in most the bowels are obstinately constipated. A case may now and then occur in which evacuations can be procured by cathartics. Pain is regarded by all physicians as the most constant symptom, and it has existed in every case that I have seen, or at least tenderness; but the late Griscom stated to me that a man once came to his office for advice in whom he suspected peritonitis; but the man asserted that he had no pain, and the doctor placed his fist on the abdominal wall and pushed backward till he was resisted by the spinal column, the man asserting that the pressure did not hurt him; yet he died the next day, the doctor declared, of peritonitis. This may be credible in view of the fact that absence of pain in puerperal peritonitis is not very uncommon. The green vomit, which was expected in all cases forty years ago, for the most part, as I have intimated, disappears under the opium treatment. There are persons in whom peritonitis does not accelerate the pulse beyond 100 beats in the minute. The pain, in rare cases, remits and recurs with some degree of regularity, in this respect resembling intestinal colic. Andral reports such a case; I have also witnessed it.
MORTALITY.—Up to the time when the opium treatment was adopted, peritonitis was a fearful word; a large proportion of those attacked by it died of it. In 1832, I began to visit hospitals as a medical student, and for eight years, at home or abroad, was almost a daily attendant. The number of recoveries of those that I saw in that time can be counted on the fingers of one hand. This may be regarded as its natural mortality, for the treatment of that day seemed to exercise little or no control over it. (Farther on this matter will be referred to again.)
DURATION.—Chomel believed that the disease might prove fatal in eighteen hours, while he regards its average duration as seven or eight days. I very much doubt whether peritonitis, not caused by perforation, violence, or surgical operation, was ever fatal in eighteen hours. I do not remember any case of shorter duration than two or three days. Then, on the other hand, the period of seven or eight days in the fatal cases appears to me too long. In the early part of my professional life I remember to have looked for death in three or four days. At present, in the fatal cases, life is prolonged to double or more than double that time. In the majority of those that recover at present the duration of the symptoms is from two days to a week; in a few they have continued fourteen days; and lately I have assisted in the treatment of a case in which there was little amelioration for forty days, and yet the peritonitis was cured.
DIAGNOSIS.—When the symptoms are fully developed there are few diseases that are more easily recognized. It is when these symptoms are slowly or irregularly manifested, or when some other disease which may account for many of the symptoms occurs with it or precedes it, that there should be any real difficulty. It is customary to regard the danger of confounding the transit of a renal or hepatic calculus with peritonitis as worthy of comment. But if the reader will turn to the articles in this work which relate to these topics, he will find the symptoms so widely different from those enumerated in this article as belonging to peritonitis that he will be surprised that this item in the diagnosis should have occupied so much room.
In a case already referred to, in which peritonitis followed gall-stone pains, the transition was so marked by the rapid acceleration of the pulse and swelling of the abdomen that each of the three physicians in attendance at once appreciated the significance of the change. A physician who resided in the country called on me to report his own case. He had a little before had a very painful affection of the abdomen which continued for three days. The pain was paroxysmal, confined to the region of the liver, back and front, for one day; after that there was some tenderness over most of the abdomen, but no tympanitis. His pulse became frequent and his temperature advanced to 103°. His physicians believed that these symptoms justified them in treating him for peritonitis. Yet his position in bed was constantly changed, and no one attitude long continued—a restlessness which never occurs in peritonitis, but is common in calculus transits. Add to this the absence of gaseous distension and of the green vomit, the paroxysmal character of the pain (though I remember one case in which peritoneal pain increased and diminished somewhat regularly, but only one), and, finally, the sudden cessation of the pain, such as often happens in calculus transit when the calculus passes into the intestine,—it is plain that his sufferings were caused by a gall-stone. The elevation of temperature was the result of a long-continued worry of the nervous system, and the abdominal tenderness came from the many times repeated contraction of the abdominal muscles which occurs in hepatic colic. And then, to make the diagnosis more complete, this gentleman, after twelve or fourteen hours of pain, became jaundiced—in the end very much so. There was no absolute constipation, and the stools were of the color of clay from the absence of bile.
The points of difference between renal colic and peritonitis are even better defined and easier recognized than those between it and hepatic colic.
In intestinal colic there may be some inflation of the bowels, and if it continues a day or two there may be some tenderness; but it is for the most part distinguished from peritonitis by the intermittent or remittent character of the pain, by its greater severity while it lasts, by its courting, rather than repulsing, pressure, by the moderate acceleration of the pulse, by no or only slight elevation of temperature (exception being made for long continuance), by the absence of the green vomit, by the absence of the fixed position of peritonitis, etc.
There does not seem to me any need of spending time to distinguish gastritis or enteritis or neuralgia from peritonitis, their symptoms are so wholly different; and if, as is said, the mucous inflammation can penetrate all the coats of the stomach or intestine, and so cause inflammation of the peritoneal layer, that is peritonitis, and will be distinguished by the proper symptoms of peritonitis.
TREATMENT.—Chomel4 says: "If general peritonitis is intense, it should be attacked by the most powerful therapeutic agents. One should immediately prescribe a large bleeding from the arm—from 500 to 600 grammes, for example—and repeat according to the need once or even twice in the first twenty-four hours; apply to the abdomen, and particularly to the part of it where the pain was first felt, leeches in large number—fifty, even a hundred—as the violence of the disease may demand and the strength of the patient will permit." He recommends baths, presumably tepid, and describes an apparatus by which the patient can be put into the bath and lifted out of it without pain; prescribes a fixed posture, gentle laxatives, mercurial frictions, blisters; conditionally and doubtfully, paracentesis, emetics under certain circumstances—musk, etc. under others. In the treatment of general peritonitis there is no reference to opium. The word does not occur, but it does in the treatment of peritonitis following perforation. In this condition he would, among other things, give opium à haute dose, but he does not prescribe any repetition or give any details. It is probable that the idea was obtained from Graves, whose first use of opium in this accident was in 1821, although its first publication appears to have been by Stokes in 1832.
4 Dictionnaire de Médecine, 1841.
Wardell,5 who has written the latest treatise on the disease we are considering, relies greatly on bloodletting, but falls short of Chomel in the quantity of blood he would take—would bleed, not to withdraw a certain number of ounces, but to produce certain effects. The venesection is to be followed by the application of leeches—twenty, thirty, or forty—to the abdomen; after this turpentine applications to the bowels. After depletion, he says, opium should be given at once: "two or three grains may be given in urgent cases." Vesication he calls "another of our aids." He disapproves of cathartics, but when there is accumulation in the colon would use injections. "Opium in the asthenic form is the chief agent, and Graves and Stokes were among the first physicians who gave it very largely." "Two or three grains may at first be prescribed, and a grain every four or three, or even two, hours afterward." "In perforation there is sometimes great toleration of the drug. Murchison has known so large a quantity as sixty grains to be given in three days with impunity." Mercurials, he thinks, are of doubtful efficacy. In the paragraph devoted to the treatment of puerperal peritonitis the word opium does not occur, and it is only by a very doubtful inference that we can assume that he would ever use it. Chomel makes no allusion to the use of opium in the same disease.
5 Reynolds's System of Medicine.
For two years (1834-36) I was connected with the New York Hospital as house-physician or in positions by which that office is reached. The treatment of acute diffuse peritonitis then and there was formulated as follows: First, a full bleeding from the arm, commonly sixteen ounces, then a dozen or more leeches to the abdomen; following this, another bleeding or not, in the discretion of the physician. Meantime, the patient would take half a grain to a grain of calomel every two hours, with a little opium "to prevent the calomel acting on the bowels," of which there was no danger, in truth. Mercurial inunction was used at the same time. The belief was that after depletion the most important thing was "to establish mercurial action in the system;" in other words, "to diminish the plasticity of the blood." Under this plan I saw one recovery in these two years.
In 1840, I went to Vermont to give a course of lectures in the Vermont Medical College, and while there was called by the physicians to see with them several cases of peritonitis. I found that they were treating the disease on the Armstrong plan; that is, bleeding freely, and then administering a full dose of opium, as they said, "to prolong the effects of the bleeding." In most cases there was a second bleeding and a second administration of opium. Leeches were also used, and irritating applications to the abdomen, and in some cases purges. I found they were getting better results than we were in New York, and I studied their cases as closely as I could, and reached the conclusion that opium was the curative agent, and that it would be safe to omit the abstraction of blood. This conviction grew in strength with every new case, and I saw, with different physicians, several cases, the disease being more prevalent among the mountains there than in the city—at least that year. The idea then formed was that to establish the narcotic effects of opium within safe limits, and continue them by repeated administration of the drug, would cure uncomplicated peritonitis—that a kind of saturation of the system with opium would be inconsistent with the progress of the inflammation, and would subdue it. There was no theory to build the treatment on, and no explanation of the action of the drug in my mind. What I saw of the action of two full doses of opium was the only foundation for the idea. I had in the course of two years after those observations in Vermont 9 cases of general acute peritonitis, 8 of which were cured. All these were reported in succession, as they occurred, to the medical societies and in my college lectures. The plan was adopted by many members of these societies and by others with whom I had opportunity of conversing on the subject, so that soon there were several—I may say many—workers in the field; and in all instances where the practitioner had the courage to carry out the treatment favorable reports were returned. Not that every case of peritonitis was cured, but the recoveries generally exceeded those that followed any other plan ever before used. No physician tried it with a proper understanding of its details, and with courage to execute them, who if living does not practise it to-day.
The treatment of puerperal peritonitis is not allotted to me, and I am very reluctent to encroach in any degree on the province of the very competent and highly-esteemed gentleman to whom that disease was assigned. But the history of the opium treatment is very incomplete without the statement I am about to make, and I trust to his generosity to forgive this encroachment; and all the more confidently because he was not at the time acquainted with the manner in which opium was first introduced into the treatment of puerperal fever.
After the curative action of the drug was demonstrated in general peritonitis, I was anxious to try it in puerperal fever, of which peritonitis forms a part. But I had no hospital and no obstetrical practice. In 1847, I was appointed one of the physicians to Bellevue Hospital, to which an obstetrical department was attached. After one or two years a single case occurred and was sent to my division. I gave her 100 grains of opium in four days, with more or less of calomel—I have forgotten how much. She recovered, but after the symptoms of puerperal fever passed away she had secondary abscesses of the lungs. These kept her ill for several weeks. At length her recovery was complete.
In 1840 there was a very fatal visitation of puerperal fever in this hospital, and on invitation of Vaché, who then had charge of the whole institution, I was a daily visitor and took notes of all the cases. It was from these notes that Vaché compiled his report of the epidemic published in the Medical and Surgical Journal. The disease was fearfully fatal, although every known mode of treatment was tried in different cases, including Brenan's plan by turpentine, but all, with one or two exceptions, with the same result. At this time the opium plan was on its trial, and I had not acquired a confidence in it that authorized me to try it in these cases. The time for it came in 1851. Then a sudden, vigorous attack occurred. One woman was sent to me in whom the disease was well advanced. I instructed my house-physician not how much opium to give, but what effects to produce by it. I found this woman dying the next day, and that she had taken only three grains of opium in three doses. In three or four days seven cases were sent me from the lying-in wards. One was returned for error in diagnosis, and six put under treatment. Having found that prudence in my house-physician was so much more conspicuous than courage, another house-officer, who combined them both, was selected to be in almost constant attendance. The instruction I gave him was in these words: "I want you to narcotize those women to within an inch of their lives." He did it, and saved every one of them. This gentleman is now known over the whole land as a learned and distinguished surgeon. I feel called upon to give his name in this connection, that he may be a witness to the facts I state, and for the admiration with which his nerve and prudence impressed me. One of these patients took first two grains, then three grains, then four, and so on till she took twelve grains of opium at a dose, the intervals being two hours. The state into which the patient was to be brought I have denominated a state of semi-narcotism. The quantity of the drug necessary to produce this state varied surprisingly in different persons. One of these women was pretty fully narcotized by four grains every two hours. She was watched with anxiety; restoratives were kept in readiness, but nothing was done but to suspend the administration of the medicine and to wait. In seven hours the consciousness was fully restored, and the improvement in her condition was wonderful. The disease seemed to be cured. But in a few hours more the symptoms recurred, and the same medicine was again given in three-grain doses, and again narcotism was produced. Taught by the experience of the day before, we waited, and when she recovered from this second narcotism her disease was completely cured. She took no more medicine of any sort. This case was very instructive, as it taught me that over certain cases of puerperal fever opium has absolute control.
From the time here referred to, so long as the obstetrical service was maintained at Bellevue Hospital, a large proportion of cases of this fever, as they occurred, were sent to my wards, and in all these years I have not lost faith in opium. This statement, however, requires an explanation. Puerperal fever is a compound disease. Its great inflammatory lesions are found in the uterus and its appendages and in the peritoneum. When the inflammation of the uterus is the dominant lesion, and is purulent, opium has little or perhaps no control over its fatality; but in the cases in which peritonitis is the ruling lesion, if begun early, it will show its power. In this connection I will only add that in private practice the drug has been perhaps more curative than in the hospital. I have seen many cases in consultation, and a decided majority have recovered. In some instances the patient has fallen into a pleasant sleep, only broken by some administration, and ending with her recovery. In one instance a very eminent physician had undertaken to treat a case by the opium plan, but he had administered the drug so timidly that for fourteen days he had done no more than hold the disease in check. After trial, I found that I could not induce him to give the drug in my way, and I asked him to give me sole charge of the patient for twenty-four hours. To this he assented, remarking, "If you cure her, doctor, I will have it announced to the profession that she was the sickest person I ever saw get well." In half the time allowed me I was able to establish the opium symptoms as given farther on, and the lady slowly recovered.
The treatment of any form of peritonitis by opium permits the use of the drug itself, or of any extract or preparation of it which contains its narcotic qualities, but it is wise to persevere with that one first chosen unless there is strong reason for a change. This caution is based on the fact that we cannot change from one to another and be certain to obtain the same drug activity. For example, we begin with laudanum, and find what it will do. We cannot take in its place the sulphate of morphia with the certainty that we can so graduate it as to get precisely the same effects. Then the quantity which will be effectual in one case may be quite inadequate for the next. The tolerance of opium in different persons varies remarkably, and probably the disease itself increases the tolerance in all. This will be illustrated by some of the details of this paper.
The drug symptoms to be produced are as follows: Subsidence or marked diminution of the pain; some or considerable tendency to sleep; contraction of the pupils; reduction of the breathing to twelve respirations in the minute; in the favorable cases a considerable reduction in the frequency of the pulse; a gentle perspiration; an itchy state of skin, or oftener of the nose; absolute inactivity of the bowels, and after a time a subsidence of the tumor and tenderness in them; some suffusion of the eyes.
Of these several signs of opiumism there is none more easily observed and none more valuable than the frequency of the respiration; and while the physician aims to reduce it to twelve in a minute, there are chances that he will see it fall to something below that. I have often counted it at seven, and in perhaps two cases it fell to seven in two minutes; and yet these cases of marked oppression from opium all recovered. In the cases in which the respiration has fallen so low there has been considerable obtuseness of the mind; but in no case except in the hospital patient already referred to have I seen unconsciousness. Then the sleepiness, so long as the patient is easily awakened, is wholly within the limits of safety.
As to the quantity of opium to be given, I have known two grains every two hours do the work, and in other cases many times this quantity was necessary to produce this condition of semi-narcotism. The plan is to begin with a dose that is safe—say two or three grains of opium or its equivalent of sulphate of morphia—and in two hours notice its effects. If any of the opium symptoms have appeared, repeat the dose; if none, increase by one grain, and so on at intervals of two hours till the degree of tolerance in the patient is ascertained. After that the case can be treated by a diminished occupation of the physician's time—two or three visits a day. The dose is to be increased if the opium symptoms diminish before the disease yields, but always to be diminished or discontinued if narcotism is approaching. The duration of the treatment will be sometimes no more than two or three days; it may be a week, or even a fortnight, and in one case already mentioned the symptoms persisted mildly for forty days, and then yielded. In this case the medicine used was the sulphate of morphia, and the enormous dose reached by steady and graduated increase was one grain and a quarter every forty minutes in a boy ten years old.
In some puerperal cases the doses have been so large as to require witnesses to make the statement of them credible, and the administration of them criminal had not the effect of each dose been carefully studied and the amount of each measured by the action or inadequate action of the next preceding one.
Here are the doses given a woman who fell sick October 13, 1857; the record was made by C. H. Rawson during the treatment, and was kindly given me two or three years ago: On the first appearance of her disease, while the diagnosis was uncertain, 10 grains of Dover's powder gave her a quiet night. The next day the disease was more manifest, and she took of Magendie's solution (2 grains of sulphate of morphine to a drachm of water) x minims every hour; growing worse, at night she took xxx minims every hour; the next day, xl minims every hour, and no change of symptoms. She took in twenty-four hours 32 grains of sulphate of morphia; slept, but was awakened by the slightest noise. On the fourth day 31/3 drachms of the solution, and opium as follows: at 4 P.M., 3 gr.; at 5 P.M., 4 gr.; at 6 P.M., 5 gr.; at 7 P.M., 6 gr., and 6 gr. hourly after 7 P.M. Sleep light. Fifth day, in twenty-six hours took in opium and morphine the equivalent of 208 gr. of opium. The sixth day, 212 gr. of opium; on the seventh day, 221 gr. of opium; on the eighth, 224 gr.; on the ninth, the same quantity; on the tenth, the same; on the eleventh, 247 gr., pulse subsiding; on the twelfth, 261 gr., other symptoms better; on the thirteenth, 144 gr.; fourteenth day, 4 gr. hourly; slept for the first time heavily, all other symptoms improving, bowels moved freely, ate well, tympanites subsiding; fifteenth day, 1 gr. of opium every two hours, and at night the last dose. Recovery was complete. The woman denied the opium habit, and the medicines were tested by the apothecary. Such doses can only find their justification in the demonstrated fact that smaller doses will not produce the degree of narcotism desired.
In Keating's edition of Ramsbotham's Midwifery a case is reported by myself in which a woman, by pretty rapidly increasing doses, reached forty-eight grain doses of opium, with the effect of curing her disease and substituting a temporary active delirium.
A word of caution is probably necessary regarding the use of opium in high doses when peritonitis and Bright's disease coexist. I have already said that I have but scanty personal knowledge of such a concurrence, but in Bright's disease alone I have known a large, non-heroic dose of an opiate fatal. For example: A young man had a felon on his finger, and did not sleep, so great was his pain. His physician prescribed 40 drops of laudanum at bedtime. Not sleeping on this, he took another portion of 40 drops, and in the morning he was found in a comatose condition, and in the course of the day he died. A post-mortem examination revealed Bright's disease, which was not before suspected. A woman took half a grain of the sulphate of morphine—for what reason I do not know. I was called to see her when she was in a semi-comatose state. The time between my seeing her and that of taking the morphine was fourteen or fifteen hours; its removal from the body was therefore hopeless. Her limbs were swollen with oedema, and the urine contained albumen and casts. Although the usual means of opposing the poisonous effects of opium were resorted to, they were of little use, and the patient died in the course of the day. These are selected from a considerable number of similar cases that show a similarity in their action on the brain of opium and urea. It seems that opium precipitates the uræmic coma, yet the coma produced by these agents combined is not so profound as that produced by opium alone. There is in it some movement of the limbs or body or some imperfect utterances, yet it seems to be more fatal than the coma of opium unaided. Notwithstanding all this, I have met with several cases of cardiac disease combined with Bright's—perhaps I should say many—in which half a grain of morphia sulphate has been taken every night to procure sleep with only beneficial results. This has been observed several times when physicians have been the patients.
These facts are stated to show the hesitation and prudence that should control the administration of opium when there is urea in the blood, whether there is peritonitis or not; but a case in which one form of Bright's disease preceded, and perhaps caused, peritonitis will be more instructive: A gentleman sixty-eight years of age was attacked by peritonitis on Thursday evening. There was a moderate chill at the onset (this being one of the few cases in which I have witnessed this occurrence). The diagnosis was then uncertain, and he took quieting doses of Dover's powder, which gave him sleep. The next day the diagnosis was easily made. The urine was examined for albumen, and none found. It was, however, scanty. He took only six-eighths of a grain of sulphate of morphine in the first twenty hours. It was then increased, so that in the next twenty-four hours he took two grains of the sulphate in divided doses—a quantity which has been greatly exceeded in hundreds of cases with the best results; but in this case coma was the result. At 10 A.M. on Sunday he was comatose, but not profoundly; he could be aroused. The breaths were five in the minute, the pulse increasing in frequency; secretion of urine next to none. The galvanic battery was used. After seven hours, while the respiration was growing more natural, the pulse grew more frequent and the stupor increased. At 8.30 P.M. the breathing was fifteen in the minute, and full and perfectly easy, but the pulse was running at 140, and the coma unbroken, and the pupils of good size. The effects of the opiate had passed off, but those of uræmia were profound. He died at 11 P.M. After the alarming symptoms occurred we tried to procure another specimen of the urine for fuller examination, but could not. It was only after his death that we procured the evidences that he had shown symptoms of contracted kidney for months. The urine contained no albumen at the time of our examination, as very often happens in that disease.
Regarding other points in the opium treatment there is little to be said. Purgatives are entirely inadmissible. The bowels should be left entirely at rest till they recover their muscular tone; then they will expel first the gas, and then the feces; or if, after the inflammation is subdued, they do not move of their own accord, injections are admissible. I have often left the bowels absolutely inactive for fourteen days without any recognizable consequences. If I meet a physician who believes that leeches are essential, I yield him his point, but never advise them. I do this because a moderate bloodletting will do no harm, and little if any good. The same rule I apply to irritating applications to the surface of the abdomen. Mercurials, I think, are harmful, and therefore I object to them. As to food, it should be milk, fresh eggs beaten up with water and pleasantly flavored, peptones, etc. selected from among those that leave no refuse.
The testimony of physicians who have adopted this plan within my own circle is unanimously in favor of it. B. R. Palmer of Woodstock, Vt., afterward of Louisville, Ky., who was the first to test it, told me after a few years' trial that he used to dread peritonitis as he would dread the plague, but with opium in his pocket he met it cheerfully and hopefully, as he did a pneumonia. Chalmers of New York, who is known by many readers of this article, has a very extensive practice, and he told me lately that he had not had a fatal case of peritonitis in twenty-two years. He embraced the plan early.
Now, how did this treatment originate? From whom did the profession adopt it? In 1836-37, I visited daily the hospitals of London, Edinburgh, and Paris, was in frequent intercourse with the physicians of those cities, and never saw a patient anywhere treated by opium, and never heard the least allusion to it. I can safely appeal to any physician who was familiar with the history of the profession before the year 1840, or for two or three years later perhaps, to inquire whether anything was generally known regarding this treatment of peritonitis, or whether he himself ever heard of it. Let the inquiry be made of Willard Parker of New York or Alfred Stillé of Philadelphia—men of a degree of intelligence and learning that has made them leaders in the profession—and of all the profession at that time. I venture to assume that they were as ignorant as I was of what Graves and Stokes had done.
The following fact is significant: In 1843, Graves published A System of Clinical Medicine, the preface of which is dated January, 1843. In this he says he had previously published essays, lectures, and articles in several medical journals. In this volume he intends, he says, "to revise what I have written, and to compress the whole within the limits of a single volume." There is nothing in the table of contents or explanatory headings of the several chapters of this volume which alludes to treating peritonitis by opium. It is fair to infer that the cases treated in 1823 had made little impression on his mind, and that he did not think his treatment could take rank as a discovery; and yet Stokes had made favorable mention of it eleven years before this publication. Graves, then, did not publish his cases, and the first knowledge which the profession could have of them was through Stokes's paper, published in the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science, No. 1, in 1832. Perhaps the reason why Stokes's paper produced so little impression on the profession may be found in the fact that first numbers of journals of every sort have few readers. Anyway, it was not till after the opium treatment had attracted much attention in this country that anybody here knew that Graves or Stokes had ever had anything to do with it. Besides, Graves and Stokes had only used opium in cases of perforation, and they had no plan or symptomatic guide in the use of the drug.
There is something new and strange in the following case copied from the Medical Record of May 12, 1883, under the heading, "Operative Measures in Acute Peritonitis:" "Dr. Reibel relates the case of a child, eight years old, suffering from acute idiopathic peritonitis. The disease had resisted all treatment, and the child being, apparently, about to die, it was determined to open the abdomen with a view to removing the fluid and washing out the peritoneal cavity with a solution of carbolic acid. The meteorism was intense. No fluid was found in the abdominal cavity. In prolonging the incision a loop of the intestine was punctured, as evidenced by the escape of gas and intestinal fluid. The wound was washed with carbolic acid and covered with a layer of antiseptic cotton. The following day the little patient was nearly free from pain, and was able to retain a little milk. The temperature had fallen from 104° to 101°, and the tympanitis was almost entirely gone. The (wounded) loop of intestine was adherent to the abdominal wall, and there had been no escape of fluid into the peritoneal cavity. The patient made an excellent recovery."
If the statements of this abstract are true, and the future supports the practice pursued in this case, acute peritonitis is likely to become a surgical rather than a medical disease. Reibel thinks that opening the intestine in the way he did is a better plan than the punctures with the exploring-needle to relieve the patient of the tympanitis. But it will require more facts than one to persuade the profession that this mishap of the scalpel can grow into a rule of practice. (The Record finds this report in the Journal de Médecine de Paris.)
I cannot say that I see the value of a distinction made in 1877 by Gubler between peritonitis and peritonism. By the latter term is meant the total of nervous and other symptoms that arise in the course of peritonitis. Trasour has lately revived this distinction, and thinks it important, and that a light peritonitis may be attended by a grave peritonism. He holds that the distinction is important, because "the treatment of peritonism consists in the administration of alcohol, chloral, and especially of opium in large doses. Of the latter fifteen grains may be given in twenty-four hours." "The symptoms [of peritonism] are produced through the agency of the great sympathetic."6
6 Med. Record, Aug. 28, 1883.
I cannot say that I have seen great effects follow small causes, but think that, in general, the effects of peritonitis on the pulse, strength, nervous tone, etc. are, to some extent at least, a measure of its severity.
CONSEQUENCES OF PERITONITIS.—These are usually nothing. When recovery takes place it is commonly complete, but cases have been known in which the intestines have been left bound to the abdominal wall and to each other, and so made incapable of their natural action. The results of this are a swollen, tympanitic abdomen and impaction of the bowels, but the general health may be very good. A woman at Bellevue was left in this condition, yet she performed the duties of nurse in one of the wards for some years, and finally disappeared from the institution, and I do not know how it ended with her—probably by the breaking up of the adhesions and a return of the bowels to their natural condition.
In some few cases there remains new tissue, which in time is partly broken up and remains partly attached. In this manner strings and bands of considerable strength can be formed, and into these loops the intestine may pass, so as to form an internal hernia of a very dangerous character. In some bands are formed across the intestine, which by contraction flatten the tube and obstruct the fecal movement. There is reason to believe that such bands and bridles are formed by local inflammation of such imperfect manifestation by symptoms that the patient knows nothing about it. A very striking case illustrating the possible sequence of this inflammation came under my observation early in my professional life: A colored woman about twenty-five years of age gave a very clear history of a peritonitis from the consequences of which she had suffered two years before I saw her. About six months after recovery she began to have constipation and to suffer from small and frequent discharges of urine. The latter gradually grew milky and to have a bad odor; the constipation grew more and more, and at length came to be absolute for many days; then would come a diarrhoea of some hours' continuance, after which she would have a feeling of relief. This was her state when I saw her. She was emaciated, and so feeble as hardly able to leave her bed. She vomited occasionally, and her appetite for food was all gone. The urine was heavily loaded with pus, and was ammoniacal. She died after a few weeks. At post-mortem examination a firm membrane was found strained across the upper strait of the pelvis, wholly separating the abdominal cavity from the pelvic. It looked like a drum-head. The left posterior border was drawn very tensely over the colon where it passed into the pelvic cavity, flattening it down completely and making stricture. To the under or lower surface the fundus of the uterus and the base of the bladder were firmly adherent, and in this way both were suspended. The effect of this unnatural suspension of the inactive uterus did not seem to be noticeable, but with the bladder it was very different: it contained three to four ounces of water, ammoniacal and full of pus, and it could never have emptied itself. The explanation is very simple. During the peritonitis a false membrane was effused on the pelvic viscera in situ. When the period of contraction which is common to all such structures came, the new membrane was separated from the greater part of these two organs, but not from their bases. The firm attachment to the brim of the pelvis did the rest. So unusual a sequel of peritonitis I think deserves a record. I should add there were no adhesions above the pelvis. Such a structure as this, found long after the active symptoms of peritonitis have passed, as also the bands and cords before spoken of, does not give support to the doctrine that the false membranes are broken down into fatty matter, and in this condition absorbed.
The possible remote effects of peritonitis are shown in a case reported by E. A. Mearns to the Medical Record, published Sept. 15, 1883: A young man, aged nineteen, four years after he had had acute general peritonitis was attacked with constipation, which was absolute. He had had before occasional attacks of pain in the bowels and constipation, which were overcome. But this was invincible. He had the train of symptoms usual in intestinal obstruction. There was no fever or tympanitis, and this time but little pain. He lived eight days. There was a tangle and a constriction of the intestines at the middle of the ileum, caused by the contraction and hardening of the effusion of the old peritonitis, and the intestine was very much softened.
H. B. Sands reports in another number of the same journal: "The patient was a man about thirty who had suffered from acute obstruction for a week. No exact diagnosis was made. When the abdomen was opened the intestinal coils were found extremely adherent one to another in consequence of a former peritonitis. A careful search failed to discover the nature or seat of the obstruction. The abdominal wound was closed, and the patient died soon after."
There is no part of the gastro-intestinal canal that may not, from one cause or another, become the seat of ulceration. The jejunum is the part of the tube long supposed to be an exception to this rule, but even in it one or two observers have found ulcers. These ulcers often exist without distinctive symptoms, and may go on to cicatrization without announcing themselves. In the stomach, however, there are commonly indications which will admit a conjecture of their existence, and perhaps a diagnosis. Sometimes these ulcers penetrate all the tissues of the tube and allow the contents of the intestine to escape into the peritoneal cavity, or they may have destroyed all but the external layer, and some succussion, as in coughing, sneezing, laughing, or perhaps straining at stool, may make the opening complete, with the same results. In these cases it seems to be inevitable that inflammation should follow, unless it has preceded, the complete opening and sealed it up by adhesions. The tendency of such an inflammation is to be local and limited, but when the contents of intestines escape into the peritoneal cavity it usually becomes general. These accidents are usually attended by the sudden development of local pain, by rapid increase in the frequency of the pulse, paleness, and prostration. The perforation of the vermiform appendix is often a partial exception to this statement, for, while the local symptoms are marked, the sympathy of the general system is not so quickly awakened. The same can be said of perityphlitis. The symptoms are often local for some time—a day or more; sometimes subside, as if the disease were cured, and then return in full form. This is produced by the tendency of the inflammation to limit itself to the immediate neighborhood of its cause. Lymph is effused at a short distance from the point of irritation, and seals the parts together, so as to shut in the offending substance; and though this substance may produce pus in contact with intestine or appendix, that fluid is held for a time, as in abscess. It may be permanently held in its new-made sac till it burrows into some near part, as the intestine or bladder, or remain an abscess till opened by Willard Parker's puncture. On the other hand, the contents of this sac may be increased till it breaks bounds and causes extension of the peritoneal inflammation or general peritonitis. In one particular case this process of setting limits and breaking through them occurred in a young lady four times at intervals of from one to two days. When the limiting adhesions were established symptoms would subside, so as to encourage in her physicians the hope, even the expectation, of recovery; but again and again the fire was rekindled, and she died eight days after the first attack. In the greater number of cases the first breaking of the adhesions is followed by full peritonitis, and this often by death.
The perforations of the stomach which I have seen have not been attended by the severe pain described by most authors, but by a sudden prostration of strength and a feeling of disquiet and sinking at the stomach; more of collapse than of inflammation in the symptoms; no tumefaction of the bowels; almost nothing to indicate the nature of the accident, but a sudden new sensation in the bowels, a rapid increase in the frequency of the pulse, it growing small as it increases in rapidity, and a pale and shrunken countenance, and death in from twelve to thirty hours. Then, on inspection, hardly any signs of peritonitis are found. The peritoneal vessels are fuller and the membrane redder than in health, and its surface covered with the thinnest possible film of lymphy exudation, and some serum in the deeper parts of the cavity.
These ulcerations of the stomach are not always fatal by peritonitis. A few instances are recorded in which adhesions of the outer surface of the organ to adjoining organs have taken place, so as to protect the peritoneum almost wholly from the fatal contact with the gastric fluids, and death has occurred in some other way. I have a remarkable specimen illustrating this fact. It was taken from the body of a woman of about middle age who had long had symptoms of dyspepsia, and had from time to time vomited a little blood. It was not difficult to recognize ulcer, but the extent and peculiarities of it could be learned only by inspection. She died suddenly of copious hæmatemesis. On examination an ulcer two and a half to three inches in its several diameters was found, beginning near the pylorus and extending toward the left, which in this large space had destroyed all the coats of the stomach and exposed an inch and more of the right extremity of the pancreas and about the same extent of the liver. The liver and pancreas were both perceptibly eroded when exposed, and in the latter an artery that would admit the head of a large pin was opened. The stomach, outside of this extraordinary ulcer, was strongly attached to the adjacent organs.
The ulcerations of typhoid fever penetrate the intestine about three times in a hundred cases of the fever. This result is reached by the study of a large number of cases, and appears to be pretty generally admitted. The point where this perforation occurs is in the ileum, near the ileo-cæcal valve—within a foot or eighteen inches of it in the great majority of cases, although it has been known to occur seventy-two inches above the valve, and it has been seen very rarely in the cæcum. The fever itself may be either severe or mild. Suddenly severe pain sets in, oftenest in the lower part of the abdomen, and spreads rapidly; the pulse is quickly accelerated and becomes small; and it has been lately stated that in this and other intestinal perforations the gases of the bowels, escaping into the peritoneal cavity, will give resonance to percussion over the lower part of the liver. Fetid gas found in this cavity after death is not without importance; for example, a distinguished Senator at Washington died not long ago of a very painful abdominal disease which his physicians declined to relieve with opium, though the patient pleaded for it. His family physician at home was summoned. Although the distance he had to travel was many hundred miles, he found the patient alive and still suffering. He at once gave morphine for the relief of the pain, but the patient died. Now, this gentleman had diabetes a year or more before his death, recognized by his physician at home and also by myself. While under my observation the urine ceased to contain sugar and its quantity became normal, but soon after this albumen was occasionally found in it. The quantity was generally small, and casts were only found now and then. This new disease was mild, and seemed to be, within certain limits, manageable. He went to Washington under injunction that he was not to let official and professional labors bear with any weight upon him. This last sickness and the death would naturally enough be supposed to be some new phase or consequence of the previous illness. But, while a post-mortem examination was not permitted, the family wished to have the body embalmed. The family physician accompanied the embalmer, and as the latter made a cut through the abdominal walls there was a gush of air laden with fecal odor, and he through this opening saw the intestines covered with false membrane. He satisfied himself that the intestine was not opened. This fetid gas came from the peritoneal cavity. An ulcer had perforated the intestine somewhere, and caused the death. The final disease could be only remotely dependent on the patient's previous illness, if at all. His impaired health may have made the ulcer possible.
All kinds of perforations in the bowels, except those of the stomach, cæcum, and appendix, even the cancerous, have one history and the same symptoms; and if treatment is ever successful in such occurrences it must all be based on one set of rules—absolute rest, no pressure on the bowels, and no movements of the muscles that will aggravate it; food that will be wholly digested and absorbed by the stomach; complete abstinence from cathartic and laxative medicines, and the free administration of opium or morphine. By these means, I fully believe, numbers have already been saved from the fatal consequences of peritonitis caused by perityphlitis and perforation of the vermiform appendix—some under my own observation and others under that of my friends. A boy fourteen years of age was brought to bed by a pain in the right iliac fossa. After a few hours his father, a physician, desired me to see him. There was already a perceptible fulness, with dulness on percussion, in the fossa, and some febrile excitement. I gave a portion of morphine, and promised to call the next morning. In the morning a message came from the father stating that the boy was better and there was no need of further attendance. In the evening I was recalled. The pain had returned, and had spread over most of the bowels. He had general peritonitis. He took tincture of opium, of which I believe the largest dose was 100 drops, reached after three or four days of gradual but steady increase of dose. From that point the patient got better, and the quantity of the medicine was correspondingly reduced. There were a relapse and a repetition of the treatment, and again the disease yielded. During convalescence, about fourteen days from the attack, the boy, after emptying his bladder, was suddenly pressed to continue the discharge. Now he voided what appeared to be blood, two or three tablespoonfuls. It was, however, pus with blood enough to color it. This purulent discharge from the bladder continued for about three weeks, the boy steadily recovering his health. This occurred twenty or more years ago, and that boy is now a well-known physician. Similar cases could be recited.
In 1850, or thereabout, I attended a physician through an attack of typhoid fever. In the third week there was a sudden outbreak of peritonitis. The opium treatment was resorted to, and he recovered, and had good health for twenty years after. Peritonitis occurs rarely in typhoid fever from any other cause than perforation, and its occurrence in this case at this time, when perforation is more likely to occur, renders it probable, at least, that this attack was produced by that cause.
March 3, 1883, autopsy of Wm. Fletcher, age 59, iron-worker. On Friday last, Feb. 23d, he was attacked with pain in the region of the right iliac fossa; it was severe. There was no chill, but little fever, and only slight acceleration of the pulse. His stomach was a good deal disturbed, and the bowels were soon distended with flatus. I saw him on the Tuesday following, with James D. Elliott. The bowels were a good deal swollen and very resonant on percussion; pulse 84. His stomach was still greatly disturbed, so that he retained no food, yet there was no green vomit, but much flatulency. The movements in respiration were particularly noticeable, being nearly or quite as much abdominal as in health. There was a short friction sound in inspiration, but an entire absence of the sound produced by peristaltic action. There was no dulness on percussing over the iliac fossa, and no pain on pressure over any part of the abdomen. I was careful in examining the right fossa, for the first pain was there, and it was severe; but there was no physical sign by which the perforation could be ascertained. Still, my mind dwelt on the probability of perforation, and I expressed my fears to Elliott regarding it. The respiration was of natural frequency. The bowels had not moved for two or three days.
The next day Flint was added to the consultation. The symptoms had changed but little; the pulse was 102; no pain, no tenderness, no peristaltic action; slight friction at one point only; the abdominal respiration was as marked as before. Frequency of respiration, 18; patient sleepy; pupils only slightly contracted. When we were in consultation I again expressed my fear of perforation, but Flint expressed the most decided opinion as to its absence, because there was dulness to percussion over the liver. I had read his paper on the intrusion of gas between the ribs and liver in cases of intestinal perforation, and felt as if I were almost reproved for entertaining the thought without this physical corroboration.
Thursday, March 1st, the stomach had become much more retentive; there were no pain and no tenderness on pressure; pulse 109; no friction sound, no sound of peristaltic action, no dulness on percussion over right iliac fossa, but resonance over the whole abdomen, excepting over the pubes; there the resonance was not clear; over a small space there was dulness; this was ascribed to moderate fulness of the bladder, and, as there had been no difficulty in emptying it, nothing was said of it. The abdominal respiratory movements were the same as before.
Friday morning, at 3 A.M., no marked change had occurred in the symptoms, but from this time onward there was a steady sinking of the vital powers. The pulse grew small and frequent, the hands became cool, the breathing more frequent, and without any sudden change or new symptom he died early in the morning. At the last visit there was no resonance on percussion over the liver.
Autopsy, Saturday, March 3d, 2 P.M. The bowels were distended, as they mostly are in peritonitis, but not extraordinarily. There was now pretty free resonance over the liver. The section to open the abdominal cavity was carefully made, with the aim of ascertaining whether there was air or gas in the peritoneal cavity. When a half-inch opening was made through the peritoneum, gas was forced out through it for some seconds with an unmistakable noise. The bowels were not opened by this cut. The bowels exposed, a very thin film of false membrane was found on all the middle and upper portions of the intestines, with a fringe of injection where the folds came in contact. But two or three inches above the symphysis pubis the section opened a collection of pus which extended downward into the pelvis. Somewhere hereabout—neither of us could say exactly where—was found a lump of fecal matter, not indurated, as large as a marrowfat pea, the intestine still unopened. Search was made for the vermiform appendix. At first it was not recognized on account of its remarkable shortness. It was found, however, pointing directly toward the median line of the body, and was short because a part had been separated from the rest by slough. The end of what remained was marked by a border, one-eighth of an inch deep, of a very dark-green gangrenous color. We did not attempt to measure the quantity of pus. It was six ounces or more. It was completely bounded and shut in by adhesions.
At no time during life was there resonance over the liver, but there was some at the time of post-mortem examination before the bowels were opened, due perhaps to the fact that at death the relaxation of the muscles allowed the gas to rise higher than it did during life. The unusual median position of the abscess is important in accounting for absence of dulness, when it is usually found in slough or ulcer of the vermiform appendix.
"A Fatal Case of Typhlitis without Recognizable Symptoms." Under this title José M. Fisser published a case of inflammation of the vermiform appendix causing general peritonitis in a young woman nineteen years of age. The peculiarities of the case were that the appendix was not perforated, and consequently there was no tumor in the right iliac fossa—that the symptoms were all referred to the epigastrium, without even tenderness in the fossa. She walked the floor and tossed about in bed; the highest temperature was 103°, and the most frequent pulse was 120, and these continued but a short time. Of tympanitis there was none till near death, and then but little. The obscurity in diagnosis led to the publication of the case. The cause of this disease was fecal matter, not very hard, in the appendix.7
7 Med. Record, Sept. 1, 1883.
As much has been said in this article on the diagnosis of peritonitis, it may be well to introduce a case where that diagnosis was conjectural, and yet quite another state existed. I visited Mrs. H——, when her disease was advanced, twice. My impression was that she had peritonitis, but this opinion was held with grave doubt. After her death, Smith sent me the following record of the autopsy: "Mrs. H—— died Friday evening at ten o'clock; next day, at three in the afternoon, we made an autopsy. No gas or fluid in the peritoneal cavity; the small intestines inflated almost to bursting, with injection of the capillaries. In the left iliac region we at once discovered a portion of the intestine almost black, and on examination found a firm white band encircling and constricting that portion. Upon liberating the gas the intestines collapsed, and the constricted portion was released and easily removed. A further examination showed that two of the epiploic appendages, coming off from the colon above the sigmoid flexure, had united at their extreme points and formed a loop two and a half to three inches long, and through this loop or ring a portion of the ileum had passed, and was there constricted. The constricted intestine was about four feet in length. This examination has been gratifying to me. There was a small quantity of bloody serum in the peritoneal cavity low down in the pelvis. The dark grumous blood that passed the bowels on the second and third days can now be accounted for, and corroborates your remark that the hemorrhage looked like strangulation. This was at your first visit. This must be a new cause of strangulation, and one that we could not anticipate."
There was, before I saw her, a single vomit of a suspicious fluid, but the evidence was not strong enough to enable us to pronounce it stercoraceous. Some of the observers noticed bloody serum in the peritoneal cavity, and perhaps some shreds of lymph, but that was in consequence of the strangulation.