“When the ulcer is on the anterior wall, there is more or less irritability of the bladder, and seminal emissions or impotency. The ulcer itself may be round, oval or elongated, radiating or following the columns of Morgagni. The ulcer may present ragged, interrupted elevated edges, or they may be sharp cut and regular, as though cut with a sharp punch. The edges are sometimes hard and gristly, or may be soft and with no elevation above the surrounding tissues. The surface of the ulcer is often clean, and healthy looking granulations may be seen, or the ulcerated surface may be loosely covered with a greyish, grumous scum, that is offensive, and decidedly unhealthy for the patient. Underneath this scum there is often found an ulcerated spot, that is apparently lifeless, and will require much attention, locally and constitutionally, to prevent its rapid extension. In this form of rectal ulcer there is always more or less marked cachexia. It is the indolent ulcer, occasioned by the gradual breaking down of the tissues, that produces the grave constitutional disturbances and death. It is the small, round, or oval ulcer, with elevated, hardened edges, that produces the many and various reflex nervous symptoms, which are misleading and troublesome.”
Fig. 19.—Rectal Irrigator.
In all cases of rectal ulcer of any considerable gravity, absolute rest, both of the parts and the body, is to be maintained. Hot water irrigations and a complete destruction of the diseased surface by carbolic acid, are the first things to be thought of, together with a liquid diet.
Convert the ulcer into a carbolic acid sore and use an iodoform suppository. In fact the treatment is very similar to that recommended as an after treatment in a bad case of hemorrhoids, with such variations as the ingenuity will suggest. Bismuth, oxide of zinc, eucalyptus, mercury, resin cerates, etc.
Have found no use for iodine, nitrate of silver or acid preparation of iron, which corrode and destroy instruments in the treatment of rectal diseases.
FISSURE, OR IRRITABLE ULCER.
Of all the diseases of the rectum, considering the apparent insignificance of the lesion, this heads the list as a pain producer. Fissure has characteristics peculiar to itself and I do not think, as is claimed, that its location, just above the muco-cutaneous junction or Hilton’s line, where the nerve supply is the greatest, explains these characteristics; neither do I think it of traumatic origin.
No other ulcer, wound or abrasion in the same locality produces the pain that identifies a fissure.
