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of an hour, and has taken some brandy and beef-tea with-out a return of the hiccough.-Mid-day : Pulse 120; tempe-rature 98-6°; skin moist; thirst continues; abdomen muchdistended, but little or no pain is felt on pressure.

Fifth day.-The patient feels comfortable, though he hasnot slept much during the night Pulse 100, of bettervolume. An ounce of castor oil, taken yesterday, had openedthe bowels.

Sixth day.-Pulse 116, of good volume. He slept duringthe first part of the night. There has been another attackof hiccough. The urine passes freely through the wound,the surface of which looks dry and sloughy.

Seventh day.-The patient has passed a bad night; helooks anxious. Pulse 120, and small; respirations 35, shal-low and irregular; temperature 996° F. The urine passesthrough the wound, which still looks dry and sloughy.Within the last twenty-four hours he has taken about fourounces of brandy, with sago, arrowroot, and milk.-Mid-day He is unconscious; the pulse is very small and inter-mittent ; respirations shallow and irregular. Death ensuedat 3 o’clock.The following morbid appearances bearing on the case

were discovered at the post-mortem examination :-Themesentery and omentum were loaded with fat; no lymph,either old or recent, could be found in the peritoneal cavity.When the knife was passed through the peritoneum intothe pelvis, a quantity of pus welled up from a large patchof diffuse cellular inflammation, which extended from theside of the wound backwards to the part behind the rectum.The left kidney was of natural size, pale and soft; the capsulenon-adherent; the calices, pelvis, and ureter were dilated,and filled with purulent urine. The right kidney was im-bedded in a large quantity of fat, was somewhat smallerthan natural, and pale and soft; the calices, pelvis, andureter were very much dilated; at one spot the capsule wasadherent, and the cortical substance was wasted to aboutthe thickness of a line. The liver was large and soft, andbroke down under slight pressure. A few small vegetationswere found on the cusps of the mitral valve. About a pintof purulent fluid occupied the left pleura. The correspondinglung was compressed, but otherwise healthy.TWO CASES OF INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION TREATED BY

COLOTOMY.

(Under the care of Mr. SAVORY.)We are indebted for the following cases to Mr. P. Butler

Stoney, house-surgeon;-CASE I.-A. W , a woman fifty-six years of age, was

admitted with constipation of six, and vomiting of fivedays’ standing. She suffered every few minutes from severegriping pains, which were relieved by pressure, and statedthat the last motions she had passed had been no thickerthan her little finger. She had never been the subject ofhernia, and, although both the rectum and the vagina werecarefully explored with the finger, no evidence of any suchaffection could be detected. Her abdomen was somewhatdistended. Her vomit was not stercoraceous, and consistedof recently-taken food.On the seventh day of constipation (the day after admis-

sion) five grains of calomel with a grain of opium, and anenema consisting of two ounces of gruel and one of castoroil, were administered. The latter brought away a smallshred of mucous membrane, but no trace of faecal matterwas voided, and on the following (eighth) day, thoughthere was less vomiting, the tongue was found to be dry Iand coated with white fur, and the face drawn and slightlythinner. A drachm of sulphate of magnesia, with ten grainsof the carbonate, was ordered to be taken in an ounce ofspear-mint water every six hours.The use of this draught was discontinued on the thirteenth

day, when a final dose of half an ounce of castor oil was ad-ministered. In the meantime no action of the bowels hadbeen obtained, and the vomiting, with an intermission oftwenty-four hours, had continued. Gas had been passeddaily per anum, the pulse had remained low, and, with theexception of a rise to, 102.2° on the ninth day, the tempe-rature had varied between 982° and 99.4°.On the fifteenth day the pulse wa,s 116, weak and

thready; the temperature 984°. The tongue was thickly ’,coated and very dry, and the patient complained of ab- ’’

dominial pain, which was increased on pressure.

Mr. Savory then took the opinion of his colleagues as tothe advisability of performing colotomy, and the side onwhich the opening should be made. On the latter pointthere was some difference of opinion, but, as he suspectedthat the seat of obstruction was somewhere in the colonitself, he decided to operate on the ascending portion. Theopening in the gut gave passage to a large quantity offaecal matter and gas.On the following day the patient expressed herself as much

relieved, though she had not slept much, and was occasion-ally sick; her temperature was 100°. On the second dayafter the operation she complained of a return of the abdo-minal pain, and at three o’clock in the afternoon veryaggravated vomiting came on; an hour and a half later amotion was passed through the natural passage, althoughlarge quantities of feces passed through the artificial open-ing as well. The patient suffered from abdominal pain andvomiting until she died, at eight o’clock. She had takenabout eight ounces of brandy since the operation.

Post-mortem examination.-The body was well nourished,the rigor mortis well marked. There was considerable dis-tension of the abdomen, with well-marked tympanites inthe flanks. The abdominal cavity contained limpid andflaky puriform lymph; the exposed surfaces of the peri-toneum indicated recent acute inflammation. There wereno traces of fsecal extravasation. About eight inches abovethe rectum was found a firm, annular, and apparently ma-lignant stricture of the gut, on either side of which themucous membrane was considerably thickened and thrownout into fringe-like polypoid projections. Above the stric-ture, the intestine was much distended with faecal matter ;and, on examination of the small intestine, Peyer’s patcheswere everywhere found to be destroyed, and more or lesscontracted by old ulceration. Immediately above the ileo-caecal valve there were several sharply-defined ulcers ofabout the size of a pin’s head. The mucous membrane ofthe caecum was much excoriated, and in some places was sothin as to break on the slightest touch. There was someatheroma of the aorta; but all the other organs werehealthy.CASE 2.-This patient was a man, fifty-eight years of age,

who stated on admission that his bowels had not acted formore than a fortnight, except after taking aperient medi-cine, when a small quantity of liquid fseces had passed.The finger discovered that the calibre of the rectum wasobstructed by a soft mass on one side of which a smallaperture could be felt. An average-sized rectum-tube wastherefore introduced and made to convey a quantity of water,which brought away a large amount of faecal matter. Thisoperation was repeated for six days, when, with the consentof his colleagues, Mr. Savory opened the colon in the leftloin, in order that a free exit for the contents of the bowelmight be established before the patient’s health began tosuffer. On the following day the patient felt much better;his pulse was 100, his temperature 99-2’,- he had had a goodnight; and the faeces passed freely through the artificialopening. On the third day he suffered from hiccough, andcomplained of having had a bad night: twenty grains ofchloral were ordered for a night draught. On the twenty-sixth day he was discharged in a good condition.

ST. GEORGE’S HOSPITAL.REMOVAL OF A CIRCULAR FILM ADHERENT TO THE

PUPILLARY MARGIN.

(By Mr. BRUDENELL CARTER.)AMONGST a number of others, the following operation

was performed on the 17th inst. on a child who, up to nineyears of age, had enjoyed good sight. One eye then be-came damaged, and the other destroyed, by. quick lime.The patient had also since suffered from keratitis and iritis,which had not been treated, and which there was good rea-son to believe was due to an inherited syphilitic taint. Onadmission the damaged eye presented a considerable centralopacity of the cornea, and an opaque lens, which was foundto be covered anteriorly with a layer of inflammatorylymph, which had become adherent to the margin of theiris. In his first operation, Mr. Carter had performed iri-dectomy downwards, and withdrawn, by mouth-suction,the damaged lens. The film had, however, remained ad-