Expertise, accidents and hernias in the context of the right to health, Colombia 1915-1946.

For most physicians, the assessment of disability in cases of work accident or occupational disease is very relative matter, and clinical judgments are subjective and unsatisfactory in legal settings. Work accident legislation gives them the task of deciding on any causal links between accident and disease and indicating any economic compensation that should be awarded. They must therefore reach beyond their scientific knowledge to understand the multitude of social factors that underlie these problems in the world of work. In this article, we analyze Colombian sources from the first half of the 20th century on the physiology of labor, fatigue, professional risk, work accidents, occupational diseases, among other issues. The aim is to advance understanding of how the field of medical knowledge established an ethical approach for experts in cases of occupational accidents, focusing on hernias, typical misfortunes of the world of work.

Lumbar hernia: a short historical survey.

Lumbar hernia is a rare form of abdominal hernia, which has been recognized later along the early development of the modern surgery. it has been, on many occasions, the object of heavy debate regarding its anatomical background and as well its etiology. The authors reports the historical aspects of this rare pathology, focusing on the earliest descriptions of hernia arising in lumbar regions, on the first reports of surgical repair, and on the anatomical description of the lumbar weakness areas, that are currently named Petit's triangle and Grynfeltt and Lesshaft's triangle.

From ancient to contemporary times: a concise history of incisional hernia repair.

PURPOSE: This historical review explores the origins of incisional hernia surgery. METHODS: Resources from each significant historical time period were reviewed, namely ancient times, the Greco-Roman period, the Middle Ages and the dawn of the surgeon anatomist, and the modern era. RESULTS: Although incisional hernias only started to be widely reported in the literature in the early twentieth century, an awareness of the risk of incisional hernia formation dates back to ancient times. CONCLUSIONS: Sometimes, it is important to look back at the history and evolution of a topic to continue making positive advances in that field.

Royal ruptures: Caroline of Ansbach and the politics of illness in the 1730s.

Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, occupied a crucial position in the public life of early 18th-century Britain. She was seen to exert considerable influence on the politics of the court and, as mother to the Hanoverian dynasty's next generation, she became an important emblem for the nation's political well-being. This paper examines how such emblematic significance was challenged and qualified when Caroline's body could no longer be portrayed as healthy and life giving. Using private memoirs and correspondence from the time of her death in 1737, the paper explores the metaphorical potential of the queen's strangulated hernia, as well as the particular problems it posed for the public image of her dynasty. Through these investigations, the paper will comment upon the haphazard nature of public discussion in the early 18th century, and reveal the complex relationship between political speculation and medical diagnosis.

Arthur Keith, the anatomist who envisioned herniosis.

Arthur Keith (1866-1955) was a renowned anatomist who published 529 contributions emphasizing the interaction between structure, function, and patient care. His only practice was 4 years as a family doctor, although he later trained to be a surgeon. Ten of his many articles related to hernia; two (1906, 1924) dealt with etiology. In these he rejected Russell's congenital saccular theory of abdominal herniation, since the latter's assertions regarding peritoneal diverticula were not supported by embryological research. Instead, Keith became the first to hypothesize that defects in the belly wall of adults were brought about by pathological damage to fasciae, aponeuroses and tendons, secondary to systemic connective tissue disease abetted by aging. The pelvis was similarly afflicted, leading to vaginal prolapse, the most common hernia among women. Diverticula were likely to sprout from a weakened alimentary tract. He stated that prevention was a serious consideration. The surgical establishment, overburdened by dogmas accumulated from 5,000 years of being solely responsible for the care of patients with herniae, ignored his hypothesis for decades. However, recent research in herniology has made him a prophet.

Treatment of "hernia" in the writings of Celsus (first century AD).

Descriptions concerning "hernia" can be found from the early historical years, and its treatment was a subject mentioned by numerous physicians of Antiquity, such as Hippocrates and Praxagoras of Kos. Yet, Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a famous doctor and encyclopedist of the first century AD, was among the first to propose surgical treatment and carry it out successfully, according to his accounts. Many physicians attempted to treat several types of "hernia" before him, but more "scientific" information with details and complete descriptions could be found only in Celsus' work. In his book De Medicina, Celsus described eight types of "hernia": bronchocele, umbilical hernia, intestinal and omental hernias, hydrocele, varicocele, sarcocele (hernia carnosa), and inguinal hernia. Among them, some retain their ancient nomenclature up to now, although others have acquired gradually different terminology or are not recognized by physicians today as "hernias" (e.g. , bronchocele). For each type of "hernia", Celsus provided his readers with an extremely detailed, well reasoned description of the execution of surgical procedures accompanied usually with pre- and postoperative instructions. His innovations particularly concerned ligature of the vessels. He recommended that an injured vessel be tied in two places with lint threads and then cut between the ties. Other pre- and postoperative practices, such as sterilization and bandaging of the incised area, were elements that helped in the advances of medicine, and some of them still exist in modern medicine.

The preperitoneal approach to the groin and the inferior epigastric vessels.

Preperitoneal, a word coined by Nyhus in the 1960s, has been applied not only to posterior approaches that he, Stoppa, and Wantz popularized but to anterior exposures of the groin, which divide the transversalis fascia. This assumes that all give similar views of the easily cleaved space of Bogros. However, accumulated anatomical observations reveal the transversalis fascia as having not one but two layers. The inferior epigastric vessels run between rather than in the preperitoneal space, which is avascular and has its own fascia lining the peritoneum. Historical evidence shows that both the midline Cheatle-Henry and lateral Ugahary-Kugel approaches, which transect the abdominal wall, provide excellent exposure of the avascular preperitoneal space. However, neither the unilateral posterior McEvedy approach nor the anterior approach does, as only part of the musculature and fasciae are retracted. The inferior epigastric vasculature and posterior lamina transversalis fascia, which remain in situ, block the view. Unless they are disrupted or circumvented, neither of the latter approaches or subsequent repairs should be labeled preperitoneal.

Disease in Africa: a medical perspective from the 1950s.

So much attention is focused on the current HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa that there is a tendency to overlook the grievous burden of disease from which the peoples of that Continent have suffered for centuries. This paper, based on letters sent in 1953/54 by a young doctor in Sierra Leone to his parents in Scotland, together with extracts from Makeni Hospital records of the same period, provides a factual account of front-line medicine in West Africa half a century ago.

Milestones in the history of hernia surgery: prosthetic repair.

Billroth (1878) envisaged prostheses before Bassini's sutured cure (1887). Phelps (1894) reinforced with silver coils. Metals were replaced by plastic (Aquaviva 1944). Polypropylene (Usher 1962), resisting infection, became popular. Usher instituted tensionless, overlapping preperitoneal repair. Spermatic cord was parietalized, to obviate keyholing. Stoppa (1969) championed the sutureless Cheatle-Henry approach encasing the peritoneum. His technique, "La grande prosthese de renforcement du sac visceral" (GPRVS), was adopted by laparoscopists. Newman (1980) and Lichtenstein (1986) pioneered subaponeurotic positioning. Kelly (1898) inserted a plug into the femoral canal; Lichtenstein and Shore (1974) followed. Gilbert (1987) plugged the internal ring, and Robbins and Rutkow (1993) treated all groin herniae thus. Incisional herniation has been controlled by prefascial, retrorectus prosthetic placement (Rives-Flament 1973). ePTFE (Sher et al. 1980) is useful intraperitoneally, since it evokes few adhesions. Here, laparoscopy (Ger 1982) is competitive. Beginning in 1964 (Wirtschafter and Bentley), experimental and clinical studies have shown herniation may be associated with aging and genetic or acquired (smoking, etc.) systemic disease of connective tissue. These data, with prospective trials, all but mandate tensionless prosthetic repair.

A selective history of hernia surgery in the late eighteenth century: the treatises of Percivall Pott, Jean Louis Petit, D. August Gottlieb Richter, Don Antonio de Gimbernat, and Pieter Camper.

Of the different eras in the evolution of hernia surgery one of the most intriguing is the late eighteenth century, when surgeon/anatomists first began to publish their studies of the abdominal wall and the inguinal and femoral canals. It became known as the age of dissection, and many of the surgical successes of subsequent periods can be traced back to the anatomical knowledge gained from 1750 to 1800. These fifty years also served as the all-important transition era from text-only hernia treatises to lavishly illustrated monographs. The works of Percivall Pott, Jean Louis Petit, D. August Gottlieb Richter, Don Antonio de Gimbernat, and Pieter Camper were among the most influential hernia-related tomes of this time. Biographies of these five surgeons and extracts from their writings are presented in this article.

Wrapping the visceral sac into a bilateral mesh prosthesis in groin hernia repair.

Almost 40 years of lucky existence is enough time for questioning and/or updating the Stoppa method for hernia repair. In this paper, the author reports the circumstances of the birth of this method more than 30 years ago, recalls its innovative principles, describes its technical aspects, and exposes its good results. Not simply approving old concepts, the author concludes with critical remarks with regard to a so-called political correctness of today's groin hernia repair, which gives great importance to reducing patient trauma arising from surgery. For belief without doubt can be wrong belief!