181 



BLADDER, DISEASES OF. 



BLANK VERSE. 



182 



kidneys, bladder, or urethra are affected. When it arises from the 

 kidneys the blood presents itself in the form of small tubular cysts, 

 produced in the tubules of the kidneys. When the bladder is the seat 

 of stone, cystitis, or malignant tumours, bloody urine makes its appear- 

 ance. When the haemorrhage proceeds from the urethra, the blood 

 passes away independent of the urine. In these cases the cause of the 

 h&maturia must be treated. 



Incontinence of Urine or Enuresis. This disease presents itself in two 

 classes of cases, in children, and in adults. The first is a very common 

 and troublesome disease. The urine is usually passed voluntarily 

 during the day, but in the night it passes away involuntarily. Although 

 frequently treated as though it were a bad habit, it is the result of a 

 morbid state of the system, which must be removed, and the will 

 should only be called into exercise to assist a judicious system of treat- 

 ment. All causes of general debility should be removed. Sea air, cold 

 sea-bathing, with the administration of iron, especially the tincture of 

 the sesquichloride, are the most appropriate remedies for the want of 

 tone of the nervous system which accompanies this disease. Strychnine 

 has been recommended. The child should not lie on its back, and it 

 should be awakened in the night, at stated intervals, to pass the urine 

 voluntarily. Mechanical remedies are to be condemned. 



In the incontinence of adults, either the urine passes away from 

 previous retention, or, as happens m aged people, the bladder loses its 

 tone, and both its expulsive and retentive powers are feeble or gone. 

 In the first case the catheter must be employed to empty the bladder, 

 and the retention treated. In the other case, tonics and other reme- 

 dies necessary for the debilitated state of the system must be employed. 

 Generally, however, little can be done, and cleanliness and the use of 

 urinals are the only means left. 



Retention of Urine. This arises from various causes, and the treat- 

 ment must vary accordingly. The symptoms in all cases are, an 

 inability to evacuate the urine, whilst the desire to do so is constant 

 and frequently accompanied with pain, straining, and distress. The 

 bladder i distinctly felt to be distended above the pubes, there is 

 dullness on percussion there, and pressure produces great pain. Sick- 

 new is frequently present, the pulse becomes rapid, the skin hot, and 

 at last symptoms of the absorption of the urine present themselves, 

 and unless relieved, the patient dies from the blood becoming poisoned 

 by the urea of the urine. All these symptoms are removed by the 

 removal of the urine. This may frequently be done by the catheter, 

 but the disease can only be cured by the removal of the cause. 



The following are enumerated as causes of this disease. Stricture of 

 the urethra. Inflammation of the urethra. Irritation and spasm of 

 the neck of the bladder. Priapism. Abscess in the perineum. Abscess 

 in the pelvis. Calculus in the urethra. Injury of the perineum. 

 Paralysis. Diseased prostate. Blood in the bladder. Malignant disease 

 of the bladder or urethra. Imperforate urethra. In each of these 

 cases a sperial treatment is necessary, but in all it should be remem- 

 bered that fatal results will occur unless the distended viscus is emptied 

 of its contents. It often happens that for this purpose the catheter 

 cannot be passed into the urethra; under these circumstances, the 

 only means left is to puncture the bladder. This operation may be 

 performed from the perineum, the rectum, and the pubes. In punc- 

 turing the bladder from the perineum, an operation is performed 

 similar to that for lithotomy. [LITHOTOMY.] When this operation is 

 deemed unadvisable, the bladder may be reached from the rectum and 

 punctured here. It is only when these two methods are found to be 

 impracticable, that puncturing the bladder through the parietes of the 

 abdomen in the region of the pubes is had recourse to. These opera- 

 tions are not often performed : " but any one of them is much preferable 

 at any time to postponement of relief, and consequent disaster by 

 nation ; and all, too, are preferable to pushing a metallic catheter 

 by sheer force through an impassably strictured urethra." (Miller.) 



Dieax of the Prostate. The prostate gland is liable to the various 

 diseases of other parts of the urinary organ. It may be inflamed, or 

 abscess may occur in it, or it may be subject to malignant disease. It 

 is, however, most liable to enlargement or hypertrophy, which is one 

 of the most troublesome and frequent diseases to which old age is 

 lUrie. 



Enlargement of the prostate is of two kinds. One is the result of 

 inH. i mmatory action, and the other is an enlargement independent of 

 that process. The first is only temporary, and may be frequently 

 speedily removed by treatment. It is the result of stricture, gleet, 

 affection of the rectum, or injury to the perineum in riding. Leeches, 

 1 purgatives, the recumbent position, and counter-irritants, are the 

 r treatment. The second form of enlarged prostate is more diffi- 

 manage. It is one of the consequences of increasing age. The 

 enlargement m these cases may be partial or general. One of the most 

 painful consequences of either is a difficulty in passing the water. 

 This comes on gradually, and is also attended with difficulty in 

 emptying the rectum, as this organ is pressed on by the distended 

 prostate. As the tumour enlarges, the calls to empty the bladder are 

 more frequent, and the act is less perfectly accomplished, and a portion 

 of residuary urine remains in the bladder behind the enlargement. 

 Under these circumstances the bladder becomes irritable, and chronic 

 cystitis is established. The symptoms of this disease are then added 

 to those of the enlarged pros' 



There is no cure for this state of things, and the treatment is con- 



sequently palliative. Much, however, may be done for the comfort of 

 the patient. All excess and imprudence in diet and exercise must be 

 avoided. The recumbent position must be maintained as much as 

 possible. _ The bowels regulated by enemata and gentle aperients. 

 Opium, iron, mineral acids, and buchu, may be given according to 

 circumstances. In order to prevent distension, the catheter must be 

 had recourse to, and the water drawn off occasionally. 



BLADDERS, when brought to a clean and prepared state, are 

 especially useful to druggists, oilmen, colourmen, and manufacturers, 

 as coverings for various kinds of vessels. They derive their value from 

 the thinness, toughness, and impermeability to water possessed by their 

 substance. The bladders of the ox aud other animals, when deprived of 

 bits of loose membrane and other impurities, are washed in a weak 

 solution of chloride of lime ; they are then rinsed in clean water ; then 

 blown out, and submitted to pressure by rolling them under the arm, 

 which stretches and enlarges hem. They are finally blown out quite 

 tight, fastened, and dried. 



BLANK VERSE has been defined to be verse without rhymes, or 

 the consonance of final syllables. Johnson, in his ' Dictionary,' says it 

 means, " where the rhyme is blanched, or missed." But this, in the 

 modern sense of blank verse, is far too indefinite, as it would in- 

 clude all unrhynied verse, such ag Collius's ' Ode to Evening," Southey's 

 ' Thalaba,' and Longfellow's ' Hiawatha.' The term is now, and indeed 

 has been from the beginning, used to distinguish the heroic line of ten 

 syllables, without rhymes. All the verse of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans that has come down to us is unrhynied ; but during the 

 Middle Ages, rhyme, however it originated, came to be employed as a 

 common ornament of poetical composition, both in Latin and in the 

 vernacular tongues of most of the modern nations of Europe. In the 

 15th century, when a recurrence to classical models became the 

 fashion, attempts were made in various languages to reject rhyme, as a 

 relic of barbarism. Thus, Homer's ' Odyssey ' was translated into 

 Spanish blank verse by Gonsalvo Perez, the secretary of state to the 

 Emperor Charles V., and afterwards to Philip II. Wartou, in his 

 ' History of English Poetry,' observes also that Felice Figliucci, in his 

 admirable Italian commentary on the ethics of Aristotle, entitled 

 ' Filosofia Morale sopra i libri dell" Ethica d' Aristotile,' not only de- 

 claims against the barbarity of rhyme, and strongly recommends a total 

 rejection of this Gothic ornament to his countrymen, but enforces his 

 precept by his own example, and translates all Aristotle's quotations 

 from Homer and Euripides into verse without rhyme. Figliucci's 

 commentary waa published in 1551. Warton afterwards observes : 

 " In the year 1528 Trissino published his ' Italia Liberata di Goti,' or 

 ' Italy Delivered from the Goths,' an heroic poem professedly written 

 in imitation of the ' Iliad,' without either rhyme or the usual machi- 

 neries of the Gothic romance. Trissino 's design was to destroy the term 

 rima of Dante. We do not, however, find, whether it be from the 

 facility with which the Italian tongue falls into rhyme, or that the 

 best and established Italian poets wrote in the stanza, that these efforts 

 to restore blank verse produced any lasting effects in the progress of 

 the Italian poetry." This statement is allowed to stand unconnected in 

 the last edition of Warton ; but in fact Trissino's poem was not pub- 

 lished till it appeared in three volumes, the first printed at Rome in 

 1547, and the second and third at Venice in 1548. (See De Bure, 

 ' Bibliographic Instructive, 1 iii. 678, 679.) The 'Italia Liberata' is 

 stated by the biographers of Trissino to have been begun in 1525. 

 Another work in blank verse by the same writer, however, his tragedy 

 of ' Sophonisba,' celebrated as the first regular tragedy which appeared 

 in the Italian language, was printed in 1524. (See the catalogue at the 

 end of Riccoboni's ' Histoire du Theatre Italien.') It was first repre- 

 sented at Rome in 1515. In 1516 the tragedy of ' Rosmunda,' also in 

 blank verse, by Trissino's friend, Rucellai, was recited at Florence in 

 the presence of Pope Leo X., and was printed at Sienna in 1525. In a 

 work entitled an ' Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy,' by Joseph 

 Cooper Walker (4to. Lond. 1799), there is a short paper on the origin 

 of blank verse in the Italian language (Appendix, No. 3, pp. xx. xxiii.), 

 in which the author observes that Trissiuo, though the first Italian, 

 writer who used blank verse in long works, and accordingly recognised 

 both by his contemporaries and his countrymen generally as the first 

 who introduced it into their poetry, is not, strictly speaking, to be 

 considered as its inventor. Not to speak of the occasional specimens 

 of blank verse which are to be found interspersed in the works of 

 Boccaccio and his contemporaries, there is a blank verse poem ealleu 

 the ' Cantico del Sole,' written by St. Francis, the founder of the Fran- 

 ciscan*, in the beginning of the 13th century. This poem, however, 

 it seems, was thought to be in prose till its metrical character was 

 detected by the critic Crescimbeni in his ' Istoria della Volgar Poeaia,' 

 a work published towards the end of the 17th century. 



In the French language, in like manner, various writers have one 

 after another attempted to write verse without rhyme. Among those 

 who are said to have composed in this fashion are Jodelle and De Baif, 

 who were two of the celebrated Pleiad of poets that adorned the age of 



reign of Henry IV., repeated the same attempt, and, in the opinion of 

 the Cardinal du Perron, with more success than De Baif. (See Baillet, 

 torn. iv. p. 155.) Still more recently French blank verse was written 



