BY JAMES T. WHITTAKER, M.D.
HISTORY.—Typhlitis ([Greek: typhlos], blind), inflammation of or about the head of the colon, more especially the vermiform process, is a disease of modern recognition. Individual cases had been reported as curiosities where foreign bodies or fecal accumulations had excited inflammation in this part of the intestine, but it is undoubtedly to Dupuytren1 that the credit is due of having first individualized this disease as a separate affection. About the same time (1827) Longer Villermay published his communications in the Archives gén., t. v. 246, on the diseases of the vermiform process, to be followed in the same year by Mêlier2 and Hussar and Dance with observations on inflammation of the connective tissue in the region of the cæcum. These affections, which had been hitherto described as inflammatory tumors in the right iliac region, now received from Puchelt3 the distinct name perityphlitis.
1 Leçons oral de Cliniq. chirurg., t. iii. art. xii.
2 Arch, gén., Sept., 1827.
3 Heidelberg klin. Annal., i. 571 and viii. 524.
Perhaps the most remarkable events in the history of these affections since this time are the contributions of Stokes and Petrequin (1837) on the value of opium in the treatment of perforation of the vermiform appendix, of Albers,4 who first distinguished the special form of typhlitis stercoralis, and of Oppolzer (1858-64), who set apart, perhaps as an unnecessary refinement in differential diagnosis, a paratyphlitis, an inflammation of the post-cæcal connective tissue. Matterstock5 (1880) deserves especial mention for having given such prominence to anomalies of the vermiform appendix in the etiology of the affection; and Kraussold6 (1881) has connected his name with the therapy of the disease by the boldness with which he expresses his convictions regarding the necessity of early evacuation, by incision, of inflammatory products, as first practised by Willard Parker in 1843.
4 Beobacht. aus dem Gebiete der Pathologie, ii. 1.
5 Handbuch d. Kinderkrank., Bd. iv. p. 893.
6 Volkmann's Sammlung., No. 191.