BOUGIE

A smooth, flexible, elastic, slender cylinder, introduced into the urethra, rectum, or œsophagus, for opening or dilating it, in cases of stricture and other diseases. The invention of this instrument is claimed by Aldereto, a Portuguese physician, but its form and uses were first described by his pupil Amatus, in the year 1554. Some are solid, and some hollow; some corrosive, and some mollifying. They generally owe their elasticity to linseed oil, inspi ated by long boiling, and rendered drying by litharge. This viscid matter is spread upon a very fine cord or tubular web of cotton, flax, or silk, which is rolled upon a slab when it becomes nearly solid by drying, and is finally polished in the same way. Pickel, a French profe or of medicine, published the following recipe for the composition of bougies. Take 3 parts of boiled linseed oil, one part of amber, and one of oil of turpentine; melt and mix these ingredients well together, and spread the compound at three succe ive intervals upon a silk cord or web. Place the pieces so coated in a stove heated to 150° F.; leave them in it for 12 hours, adding 15 or 16 fresh layers in succe ion, till the instruments have acquired the proper size. Polish them first with pumice-stone, and finally smooth with tripoli and oil. This proce is the one still employed in Paris, with some slight modifications; the chief of which is di olving in the oil one twentieth of its weight of caoutchouc to render the substance more solid. For this purpose the caoutchouc must be cut into slender shreds, and added gradually to the hot oil. The silk ti ue must be fine and open, to admit of the composition entering freely among its filaments. Each succe ive layer ought to be dried first in a stove, and then in the open air, before another is applied. This proce takes two months for its completion, in forming the best bougies called elastic ; which ought to bear twisting round the finger without cracking or scaling, and extension without giving way, but retracting when let go. When the bougies are to be hollow, a mandril of iron wire, properly bent with a ring at one end, is introduced into the axis of the silk ti ue. Some bougies are made with a hollow axis of tin foil rolled into a slender tube. Bougies are also made entirely of caoutchouc, by the intervention of a solution of this substance in sulphuric ether, a menstruum sufficiently cheap in France, on account of the low duty upon alcohol. There are medicated bougies, the composition of which belongs to surgical pharmacy. The manufacture of these instruments of various kinds forms a separate and not inconsiderable branch of industry at Paris. MM. Feburger and Lamotte are eminent in this line.