Successful operation for imperforate anus and imperforate rectum: Three year follow-up report

A newborn infant, born with complete absence of the anus, sphincter, anal canal and rectum, was successfully operated upon via proctoplasty eighteen hours after birth, bringing down the sigmoid colon to serve as the new anal canal and rectum. The boy is now three years old and normal in every other respect. The formation of scar in the new anal canal, together with more progressive use of the gluteus maximus muscles, has effectuated very good control of bowel movements. The author has proctoscoped the boy several times during the past year, never finding evidence of the rectal valves, or so-called folds of Houston. This, together with the appearance of the intestinal anatomy at the time of operation, is the basis for the author's conviction that it is not the rectum, but rather the sigmoid colon, which is now functioning as an anal canal and rectum.     

Experimentelle und morphologische Untersuchungen zur Sauerstoffvergiftung

Ohne ZusammenfassungMit 1 Textabbildung.     

Staphylococcus aureus septicemia and pericarditis treated with penicillin

IN SPITE of the introduction and development of sulfonamides, the treatment of staphylococcic infections and staphylococcic septicemia remained unsatisfactory. Torrey, Julianelle, and McNamee¹ observed sixty-two patients with staphylococcic septicemia and, although these patients were treated with various sulfonamides, the authors were unable to conclude that the course of the infection was altered. They believed that those patients who survived did so presumably as the result of other treatment. Furthermore, since metastatic abscesses occur very frequently in staphylococcic septicemia, the morbidity and mortality in individual instances depends to a large extent upon the site of abscess formation and the accessibility of these abscesses to surgical incision. It has often been necessary to subject these seriously ill patients to major surgical procedures in an effort to relieve localized collections of pus.The necessity for surgical intervention becomes particularly urgent in instances of staphylococcic pericarditis. Streider and Sandusky,² reviewing the subject of pericardiostomy for suppurative pericarditis, stated that the mortality for unoperated patients must approach 100 per cent. Those patients who were operated upon had a 50 per cent mortality, but this figure becomes much higher when the pericarditis is part of a generalized pyemia. We have been able to find only a few reports of recovery through the use of chemotherapy and pericardicentesis.^3–5The already proved efficacy of penicillin in the treatment of staphylococcic infections has opened a new method of management in these cases of suppurative pericarditis. It is the purpose of this paper to report the case of a patient with staphylococcus septicemia and staphylococcus pericarditis successfully treated with penicillin administered parenterally and intrapericardially.     

Primary,massive calcification with ossification of the myocardium

An instance of massive calcification with bone formation in the myocardium of an 11-year-old boy is reported. No definite etiology for this disease is manifest, but it seems that either diphtheria or infection with Haemophilus influenzae had produced degenerative changes and necrotizing lesions of the heart muscle with secondary calcification. The heart was the only organ in the body which showed calcification.