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Fillers

The treatment of an abscess is …

BMJ 2002; 324 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.324.7341.845 (Published 06 April 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;324:845
  1. Sundaram V Ramanan, senior attending physician
  1. St Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Hartford, CT, USA

My last month of internship was spent in Chronic Surgery, well removed from the acute units but deliberately located several feet above the tuberculosis wards in a beautiful hill station. Acute Medicine housed patients with pneumonia, infectious hepatitis, severe anaemia, dysentery, amoebic liver abscess, and typhoid. Patients with acute abdominal pain, trauma, subacute intestinal obstruction (often caused by hyperinfestation with Ascaris lumbricoides), and head injuries patronised Acute Surgery. A fractured skull caused by a falling coconut was one of the commonest reasons for admission. Patients with uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes as well as those convalescing from acute illnesses were placed in Chronic Medicine, while Chronic Surgery accommodated patients with slowly healing wounds and a variety of other illnesses that needed continuing care. Here I …

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