Local Peritonitis

This may occur anywhere in the broad extent of the peritoneum, and will be more or less limited in different cases, or may be limited for a time, and then become general. It is either acute or chronic. The product of the diseased action may be serum or lymph or pus, or all of them. The cause of this local inflammation is sometimes very obvious, in other cases wholly unknown. The consequences vary all the way from harmlessness to death; the symptoms are as variable as the consequences, making the diagnosis easy in some cases, in others impossible. Some cases in which it was not difficult to recognize it have already been recorded—those caused by perityphlitis and perforation of the vermiform appendix, for example. In such cases the local pain, the swelling, the dulness or resonance on percussion, depending on whether the tumor is made by inflammatory exudation or gas, together with the general symptoms and the history, leave but little ground for doubt regarding the character of the disease. Perhaps one-half the local abscesses which form between the folds of the peritoneum are recognizable during life by the local, associated with the general, symptoms. When situated in the posterior and upper part of the abdominal cavity, the hand gives little, perhaps no, assistance, as in the most widely-known case of abscess that has been recorded in all time. While the physicians were giving to the country hopeful reports day by day, thousands of medical men shook their heads and spoke sadly of the prospects. The illustrious patient was losing rather than gaining strength and flesh, his appetite poor, his digestion poor—a strong man growing helpless—and, above all, a pulse that for months never fell below 100. With an adequate cause of abscess, whether there were chills or not, what else could it be? Thus, in peritoneal abscesses that cannot be felt the general symptoms are of great importance to the diagnosis. When abscesses tend to discharge their contents soon or late—sometimes into the intestine, sometimes into the bladder, sometimes externally: in such cases there is a fair chance. Sometimes they burst into the peritoneum: such cases are almost inevitably fatal; even opium will not cure them. The pus of these abscesses often has the fecal odor, which it acquires by the transmission of the intestinal gases through the intestinal walls. I was attending, with the late James R. Wood, a young lady in whom peritoneal abscess had been recognized. It was anterior to the intestines. In the consultation, while we were discussing the propriety of using the trocar, the mother became alarmed at the odor and appearance of the urine just passed, and summoned the doctors back to the chamber. The abscess had opened into the bladder. The urine contained pus which gave off the fecal odor strongly. This patient recovered. It should be added that these abscesses, as well as those of the convex surface of the liver and those that are post-peritoneal, sometimes pierce the diaphragm and produce empyema, or by previous adhesion of the lung to its upper surface find a way into a bronchial tube, and so the pus is expectorated.

The history of local fibrinous exudations is not as easily told as that of the purulent. We find from time to time, on the peritoneum, bands, patches, or cords of false membrane, which were produced in so quiet a way that we can get no information regarding the time when they were formed, and perhaps the subject of them was not aware that anything was wrong with the bowels till he began to have the symptoms of obstruction. These unnatural structures are formed in great variety. The omentum is found thickened and contracted. The mesentery and mesocolon are seen in a similar condition, causing wrinkling and shortening of the bowels. The spleen has on its surface patches or even plates, or one great plate, of firm fibrinous deposit, often cartilaginous in density, sometimes calcareous; and we can rarely fix the time of these occurrences by any symptoms. It is not always so with the liver. We are acquainted with a perihepatitis which is acute, attended by pain in the right side, a febrile movement, and, if the inflammation reaches the under surface of the organ, by jaundice, and have learned to combat this with cups and opiates, the latter in rather free but not heroic doses, and to expect recovery in a few days. This may leave the liver wholly or partly invested with a layer of false membrane which may have a sequel of importance. Then, again, we find the organ invested with a thick contractile membrane, but cannot learn that the symptoms of perihepatitis have ever occurred. The diseased action which produced this bad investment appears to be analogous to that which not only covers the organ with a thinner coat of similar new tissue, but inlays it everywhere with the same material in cirrhosis. This also is unattended by local pain. The effects that may result from this encasing of the liver in a strong contractile capsule may be illustrated by the following case (the late Buck was the physician): The patient was an unmarried lady of middle age who had consecrated her life to charitable works. In searching for the suffering poor she often had to ascend several flights of stairs. The time came when she found this fatiguing and a tax on her respiration. She observed at the same time that the bowels were enlarged. She called Buck, and he had no difficulty in discovering ascitic fluid. He was surprised, as he knew that her habits were perfectly good, and she had very little the appearance of an invalid. Notwithstanding the proper use of the usual remedies for dropsy, the fluid slowly increased, and at length he was obliged to draw it off. He found it to be a clear, yellowish serum. In the course of about two years she was tapped four times. I saw her, with Buck, after these tappings, when the fluid had again been effused in quantity that half filled the peritoneal cavity. The emaciation was not considerable; there was nothing of the semi-bronzed color of the skin so common in cirrhosis of similar duration; her appetite and digestion were not materially impaired; the temperature was natural; the pulse was increased in frequency only a few beats. The skin over the abdomen was in a soft, natural state, and there was nothing that suggested a hyperæmic or inflammatory dropsy. The liver on percussion appeared to be reduced in size. Taking all things into account, and especially the patient's habits and the absence cancerous cachexia, it seemed probable that the dropsy arose from atrophy of the liver, and that the atrophy was caused by an adventitious capsule of the organ, although the patient had never had symptoms of perihepatitis. From this point the fluid did not increase or diminish, but remained stationary till she died, perhaps two years after, of some other disease. Meanwhile, the lady resumed her favorite charity-work to a limited extent. At the post-mortem examination the capsule was found investing nearly the whole liver, but not materially obstructing the gall-duct. The new membrane was thick and strong, having a thickness of at least one-twentieth of an inch. The remaining liver structure was of natural appearance. The organ was reduced to one-half its natural size. No other cause of dropsy was found.