The early days of surgery for cancer of the rectum

Long before being aware of tumours elsewhere along the alimentary canal, surgeons from the earliest days of the profession were all too familiar with cancer of the rectum. The vivid local symptoms of rectal bleeding and mucous discharge, bowel disturbance and then intractable local pain, and the ready detection of the growth by a finger inserted into the fundament made diagnosis all too easy and with it, of course, a hopeless outlook for the poor sufferer. Until quite recent times, treatment was entirely palliative, with the use of hot baths, emollient enemas and dilatations of the constricting growth with bougies. Opium and laudanum, (opium dissolved in alcohol), would be prescribed in advanced cases. Some bold surgeons would use the cautery--an iron heated to red heat--to burn down a fungating growth presenting at the anal margin.