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.similar occasion, the vessels not being varicose, I believed a
two-edged instrument might be used with success; and in case
of some arteries bleeding that were here given off, the haem-
orrhage might be stopped by compression, or by the actual
cautery. The remedies that are used after the operation
ought to be taken from the class of dessicatives and spirits
&c: suppuratives would be useless.
Baldiunus, Epist. Med. 7, page 19, makes mention of a
cartilaginous excrescence of the gums that a woman aged
more than forty five years carried on the left jaw. They
commenced with small glands like warts, and became as large
as a pomegranate, hanging out of the mouth, in consequence
of which this woman could take in nothing but drink, and
sometimes thin aliments, but this was what she could not do
without much trouble, it being necessary for her to use her
little finger to push them into the mouth. This excrescence
fell four times by means of a wire passed around it ; and of
course this woman got entirely well.
Ambrose Pare, Liv. VIII. Chap. IV. Page 188, speaks of
having seen these excrescences so large that they came out
at the mouth, and entirely deformed the visage ; and that he
had extirpated them while supple by inserting them with a
double wire, and had also used hot iron ; and that the flesh
became sometimes cartilaginous, and even osseous in time.
"I have amputated them," says this author, "that were so large
that parts of them came out at the mouth ; which rendered
the patient most hideous to be seen, and there was no other
surgeon that would undertake their cure on account of these
excrescences being of a livid colour : and I did not fear this
lividity which they had not in the least decided upon, but I
had the boldness to cut, and even cauterize, the tumours, and
the malady was entirely cured ; not altogether at once, but at
different times, on account of its reappearing as often as I