Intestinal Obstruction

Abstract

During the past two or three years or longer, the cause of death following intestinal obstruction has been the subject of active investigation in a way that bears witness to the excellent spirit in which medical research is at present being pursued in the United States. The fatal outcome of interference with the normal passage of intestinal contents is usually too rapid to be attributable to starvation. Various theories, proposed to account for the characteristic symptoms, have been championed by different workers with the result that the interchange of criticism and the analysis of the results already achieved have become a stimulus to new experimentation. Thus the work of Draper, Murphy, Hartwell, Whipple and their collaborators — to single out a few names — has already greatly increased our knowledge of the problems of intestinal obstruction and brought them much nearer to solution than they were prior to the activity