Chapter 8 : Part 1

Appendicitis
by John Henry Tilden

(Page 7 of 10)

The following case comes to my mind, for some of the initial symptoms are similar to those of the case just described: M. B., age 42, farmer, was taken sick with the usual symptoms of appendicitis as near as I could get the history from his wife, who was his nurse. He lived twenty miles from Denver. When he was taken sick he called a local physician who treated him for bilious diarrhea. The drugs used, as near as the wife could remember, were small doses of calomel followed with salts to correct the I liver, morphine for pain, and bismuth and pepsin for digestion and diarrhea, and quinine to break the fever; also hot applications on the bowels.

The pain was so great that morphine had been given quite freely. At the end of one week the sick man, being no better, declared that he would go to Denver and consult another physician. When he told his physician what his intentions were, the doctor advised him not to attempt the trip himself, for he was too sick, but to send for the physician. The sick man was willful and forceful, and he was also afraid of the cost; and, being a plucky fellow, he declared that he could go just as well as not and that he would and he did.

His wife was a large, strong woman and gave him valuable assistance, but I never have understood how it was possible for so sick a man to make the journey from his home to my office. He was obliged to help himself a great deal in climbing in and out of ordinary conveyances to reach the train and, when in Denver, with his wife's assistance, he walked a half block to the street car; then from the car to my office he was obliged to walk one block and at last climb one flight of stairs. When they came into my office the wife was almost carrying him. I saw at a glance that he was a desperately sick man, and before I attempted to examine him I had him lie down for a while.

He had no history of any previous sickness; he had always been very healthy, and his life had been spent in hard work in the open air.

The general appearance of the man was that of one suffering from diffuse peritonitis. The abdomen was enormously distended; this symptom more than any other caused me to fear and wonder - fear that rupture would take place before he could be put to bed, and wonder how it was possible for a man to be out of bed and go through what he had gone through that morning without causing a fatal injury of some kind. The distention, I was informed, had been gradually coming on from the first, and he had been given morphine to control the pain from the first day of his illness. When they gave me this information I knew that the tympanites was due to narcotic paralysis, instead of coming from perforative, septic peritonitis, as the general appearance and symptoms indicated. This reasoning gave me hope in spite of the formidable appearance of the case.

The pulse was 130, temperature 102 degree F., in the forenoon; he had been troubled with nausea a great deal, but with the exception of one or two vomiting spells, the first and second day, the nausea did not often cause retching. The mouth and lips were dry, tongue coated, bad taste in mouth and breath very offensive.

The reason there had not been more vomiting in this case was because there was diarrhea at first and not quite so much locked up fecal matter as common. The bowels had been relieved of the usual accumulation more than is common to the majority of such diseases before the swelling and fixation had become established.

There is a small percentage of people who are not quite so irritable as others; in these the contraction, constriction or fixation - the embargo laid on these parts by nature in her conservative effort at preventing movement - is not established quite so early, and the efforts on the part of doctors to force a movement are more successful in cleaning out a part of the accumulation; or there may come a diarrhea from the putrefactive poisoning which is causing the infection of the cecum or appendix and leading to abscess, and this causes a partial cleaning out before fixation is established; in these cases there is never so much vomiting nor nausea, neither do they suffer so much pain for there is not the usual accumulation in the alimentary canal to excite the peristaltic movement.

The history that the patient and his wife gave me from memory was that the urine had been scant, and at times painful to pass. There had been from the start severe pain in the lower bowels, but neither the patient nor his wife could remember if there had been more pain on right, lower frontal region than anywhere else; they both declared that the pain was all through the bowels and that there was much bearing down like unto the pain of a diarrhea.

Breathing was shallow, of course; it never is otherwise in severe abdominal distention.

I scarcely touched the abdomen, for I knew I dare not press, in percussing, enough to distinguish any sound except the tympanitic. It has never been my custom to allow my curiosity to run away with my judgment, and cause me to make needless examinations.

All examinations are needless when, it matters not what the diagnosis can or must be, the treatment will be the same. All possible bowel troubles which present the same general symptoms of the disease I am here describing, must receive a like general treatment. This being true, it matters not what the difference is, there cannot be a variation requiring a bimanual examination to differentiate it that will justify the risk. All examinations are needless and criminal when there is a possibility of rupturing an abscess. Especially is this true when it is a positive fact that all typhlitic and appendicular abscesses will open into the bowels if allowed to do so.

In this ease I reasoned as follows: This must be a case of abscess, for the signs of obstruction are not those of complete obstruction, such as are seen in hernias, volvulus, constricting bands and many other causes not necessary to mention. If there were complete obstruction there would be increasing nausea and vomiting, ending in collapse and death. This tympanites cannot be from peritonitis for perforation would be necessary to cause it and nothing would stop the progress after it had once started except to open the cavity wash and drain. Hence this cannot be peritonitis, for there has been no operation and the patient still lives. It can be distention from the effects of morphine, but there must be more than morphine paralysis, for there is a temperature of 102 degree to 103 degree F., and there has been, so the wife says, a temperature of 104 degree F. The pulse rate being 130 does not indicate fever nor exhaustion, and is not in keeping with the temperature nor physical strength, hence the rapidity must be partly due to pressure on the diaphragm from the gas distention and partly from the paralyzing effect that opium has on the heart.