San Francisco : Jos. Winterburn & Co., 1881.
Description : [1 l.] pl., [1]-11 p. ; ill.: 2 phot. ; 23 cm.
Photographs : two albumen portraits, before and after surgery.
Subject : Thyroid — Goiter, thyroidectomy.
Notes :
The patient, as may be seen from the photographs taken before and after the operation of the case, was a young man of about twenty-four years of age by the name of Giuseppe Balbi, having left Ronco-Scrivia, a small village situated in the mountains of Piedmont, Italy, near Genoa, where goitrous tumors are not rare. — Page 8.
In a room packed with friends and relatives of the patient, Devecchi followed Fiorani's unusual procedure for extirpating a goiter. He first peeled away aponeurotic tissue as though operating for hernia. All the stitches to close the wound were put in place and the tumor then brought forward out of the wound and tied off with an elastic ligature around its peduncle. If everything had gone well, the stitches would be closed and the tumor would mortify and drop off in a matter of days. Unfortunately, the patient's respiration was compromised after Devecchi tied the ligature and he was forced to complete a thyroidectomy. This was the first extirpation of goiter from a male subject in California.
