Urethral Stricture JOHN P. BLANDY M.A., D.M., M.Ch., F.R.C.S
Postgrad Med J: first published as 10.1136/pgmj.56.656.383 on 1 June 1980. Downloaded from Postgraduate Medical Journal (June 1980) 56, 383-418 Urethral stricture JOHN P. BLANDY M.A., D.M., M.Ch., F.R.C.S. The London and St Peter's Hospitals, The London Hospital Medical College, University of London THE earliest records of medicine are much concerned inflammation... Spasmodic stricture arises with the management of urethral strictures by means either from a contraction of the muscles sur- of catheters and sounds. In ancient India Susruta rounding the urethra, or from the urethra described the use of a reed catheter lubricated with itself... Inflammatory stricture ... is generally ghee*. In Greece, Socrates was known to joke about produced by the inflammation of gonorrhoea; the gleet of others, and poor Epicurus committed but there is another mode by which it is caused, suicide when he could no longer dilate his own and that is, the introduction of a bougie...' stricture. In Rome in the first century, Celsus (Castle, 1831). described the operation of external urethrotomy The treatment of stricture was essentially by means for a calculus impacted behind a stricture, and of intermittent urethrotomy became part of the canon of classical bouginage: copyright. medicine preserved by the Arabs only to be re- 'Bougies are made of either wax, catgut, or discovered in the Renaissance, when Ambroise silver: and they are usually numbered from 1 to Pare (1510-1590) devised an instrument for scraping 16 according to their dimension, so that the 'carnosities' from the urethra. Silver catheters surgeon may, on each occasion, know the armed with a concealed lancet were in use in 1795, size he is using, and the size last used' (Castle, and in 1817 Civiale of Paris devised a practical 1831).
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