Word: urethra
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Lancet touched off another major debate by charging that London Surgeon Sir Henry Thompson had caused the death of exiled Emperor Napoleon III by operating on him for a bladder stone by lithotrity (penetration into the urethra by a pair of forceps) instead of lithotomy (incision into the bladder...
Instead of a mold, which has to be removed in a second operation, the doctors used a three-by-four-inch. egg-shaped plastic bag. They removed B.C.M.'s diseased bladder, severing the ureters and the urethra where they entered the bladder, and put the inflated bag in its place. A Y-shaped tube ran through the bag. Its two arms were inserted through the dangling ureters to the kidneys and its trunk was passed through the urethra and outside the body through an incision (necessary only in males). This short cut from the kidneys permitted B.C.M. to live...
...completed the first of three distinct layers of tissue, and at the end of 90 days the smooth muscle tissue that discharges the bladder at will had been formed. Meanwhile, the pouch had adhered to the surrounding body tissues and to the severed ends of the ureters and urethra...
B.C.M. now had a perfectly healthy (although slightly smaller) new bladder. The plastic bag was deflated and, with its tubes, pulled out through the urethra and the incision without further surgery. Since the operation had not touched the small sphincter muscle that opens and closes the entrance to the urethra, the patient had no difficulty in controlling his new bladder...
...Strength. The origin of the regenerated tissue posed an interesting question. Some layers were probably the result of the body's normal healing process, and others may have been formed from blood cells; connective tissue undoubtedly was formed from the ureters and urethra. But the appearance of smooth muscle in the pouch was, in the words of the doctors, "more difficult to rationalize" : true regeneration of smooth muscle has been observed only in rare situations, and mostly in animals. After considering several possible sources, doctors could only conclude that the smooth muscle in the new bladder may somehow have...