Note 54 — PART SECOND. OF PARTICULAR SURGICAL SUBJECTS. (continued 8)

[When the pain is considerable the camphorated liniment with morphia, laudanum, or belladonna, will be of great service. It should be rubbed upon the scrotum every four or five hours, avoiding of course injury to the inflamed testicle and epididymis. When the acute symptoms of the disease have subsided, under the treatment recommended in the text, the most efficacious practice is compression of the enlarged organ, by strapping it with the gum and mercurial plaster. Dr. Fricke of Hamburg pursues this plan in the very commencement of the inflammation, however severe, with the effect often of curing his patients in a few days. The plaster should be cut into narrow strips, not more than half an inch in width, and be applied in a circular manner round the testicle, which is to be previously drawn to the bottom of the scrotum. The first piece is to be placed round the insertion of the cord, just above the epididymis, and after the whole organ has been thus enveloped, another series of strips is to be applied from below upwards, to confine the first, and more completely equalise the pressure. Great care is to be taken not to pucker the skin, which should be previously divested of hair. “If the pressure of the plaster occasions pain or irritation, the strips are to be removed till the inflammation and sensibility are diminished. In many instances the patient experiences almost immediate relief from the application.” This remedy, which has been recently claimed by a European writer as new, appears to have been employed, with marked success, in the Pennsylvania Hospital, in the early part of the present century.—ED.]