CENTRAL LONDON OPHTHALMIC HOSPITAL: OBSTRUCTED LACHRYMAL DUCT.

Abstract

question which awsits further investigation. One can readily conceive, supposing the theory of this organ rendering fat fit for absorption to be true, that any implication, however slight, interferes with the process, and leads to emaciation. The previous indigestion seems to prove that an atonic condition of the stomach prepares the way for a more serious state of things; and that the first morbid deposit is accompanied with pain differing from the ordinary uncomfortable dyspeptic sensations. After a time, there is an amount of hypertrophy in the muscular fibres surrounding the pyloric end of the stomach, which greatly aids the passage of alimeat into the duodenum, and then the former paroxysms of pain after a meal vanish; and should the cancerous deposition be going on but slowly, the health may mend, and the patient for a time indulge the hope of recovery. Such a course probably affords the true explanation of the change for the better in the poor woman whose case is first related. Then came a time when the disease so encroached on the muscular substance, that the slightest quantity of food in its passage caused exquisite pain, and she at last refused all nourishment. In the other woman, there was considerable hypertrophy of the muscular coat at the pylorus, and no infiltration of morbid matter; therefore, one might have expected greater freedom from vomiting, and less pain than in the first patient. The reverse was the case; and we can only attribute her more speedy dissolution to disease occupying such an extensive surface, and keeping up direct irritation throughout the whole cavity of the abdomen: added to which, her general appearance indicated a more delicate constitution, and one far less fitted to bear up against disease than was possessed by the former woman.