I 
Seel. IX. , Burs^ Mucosjl OF THE Human Body. ji 
has of late been tranfmitted from one author to another, from a want of due 
attention and refledlion (J")> 
Upon the whole, I have no doubt that many lives may be faved by adopt- 
ing the following rules in the operation for hernia. 
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i 
' If the furgeon is not called till the bowels are evidently in a ftate of mor- 
tification, the method recommended by authors is to be followed. 
But if he is called in proper time, after trying in vain the ordinary me- 
thod of reducing the bowels, he ought to operate more early than is common- 
ly done, or before the inflammation can have produced adhefion ; in which 
cafe the operation, after dividing the fkin, fhould confifl merely in the taking 
off the' flridlure by cutting the tendon. In this cafe, after the fkin oppofite to 
the ring is cut, the ftriflure is to be taken off by dividing the tendon 5 after 
which the bowels may, by gentle prefTure, be returned into the abdomen, 
without any danger of their fuffering by being twilled ; and the inflammation 
which follows the divifion of the tendon, elpecially if the fides of the incifion 
... ■ ia 
(/) The ingenious M. j. L. Petit propofed many years ago to avoid opening the fac in the ope- 
ration for certain'eafes in. ftrangulated hernia, as appears by a pofthumous work of his printed at 
Paris in 1774, in three volumes, De Malad. Chirurg. It has been reported that he afterwards rc- 
linquifhed this method, and “ joined keenly with thofe who had oppofed it but I find no proof 
of this in his pofthumous work. >Biit if we attend to his reafoning upon it in Tom. II. p. 356, 
r 
where he lays down the following propofition, which not only appears at firft fight paradoxical, but 
which cannot be founded on proper fads, and leads him, in p. 359, to a moft dangerous and falfe 
conclufion, “ Qu’il eft bon, pour reuflir, que les parties aient ete quelque terns a la gene,” to wit, 
“ Que ces operations faites aux hernies fans etranglement, n’ont pas des fuites fi heureufes, que cel- 
“ les, qui font faites aux hernies qui font etranglees we will readily perceive that Mr Petit did 
not perceive the chief advantages of the operation he propofed ; I mean, that the danger in the 
common metho.d of operating arifes chiefly from the expofure of the bowels to the air ; and as this 
^ material faeft has been little better underftood by various authors who have lately wrote on the fub- 
jedl, that method has been rejedled by them on as flight foundation as that on which it was propo- 
fed by Mr Petit. 
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