Advertisements of means of curing rupture without operation are very common, but in most cases the advertiser has for sale a special form of truss or other appliance. The disorder is so well-known to be of a mechanical or structural nature, that it might have been thought that it would hardly have been worth anybody’s while to advertise drugs for its cure. Nevertheless there are, at least, two instances in which medicine for internal or external use is supplied; the results of examination of these are here given.
RICE’S TREATMENT FOR RUPTURE.
The following is a specimen of the wording of the advertisement of this “treatment” which used to be, and perhaps still is, very commonly illustrated by a picture of a bricklayer filling up a hole in a wall:
RUPTURE CURED.
Do You See this Bricklayer Closing up the Opening in that Wall. That is the way to cure Rupture, by filling in the opening with new and stronger tissue.
A rupture is simply a break in a wall—the wall of muscle that protects the bowels and other internal organs.
It is just as easy to cure a wound or break in this muscle as one in the arm or hand.
Now this break may be no larger than the tip of your finger. But it is large enough to allow part of the intestines to crowd through. Of course, this cannot heal unless nature is assisted. That is just what this Method does. It enables you to retain the protrusion inside the wall in its proper place.
Then we give you a Developing Lymphol to apply on the rupture opening. This penetrates through the skin to the edges of the opening and removes the hard ring which has formed around the break.
Then the healing process begins. Nature, no longer handicapped by the protruding bowel and hardened ring at the opening, and stimulated by the action of the Lymphol, throws out her supply of lymph, and the opening is again filled with new muscle.