Abstract
The authors have encountered four cases of stercoral ulcer of the rectum. These cases comprised of a man and three women, ranged from 38 to 84 of age. They were admitted to the clinic because of sudden onsets of bloody stool after bouts of troublesome defecation. Emergency sigmoidoscopies, performed after the patients were given glycerin enemas, revealed (dependenting on the patient); spotty redness, erosion, disapperance of blood vessels, exsudative changes, homorrhage of the mucous membrane and irregular superficial ulcers in the patient's lower rectum. A biopsy taken from the lesion revealed denuded mucosas and, in some cases, hemorrhage into the interstitial tissue or superficial epithelium was replaced by fibrinous exsudate intermingled with a few polymorphonucleal leukocytes. Almost all the patients revealed a tendency to constipation, but all were in good physical condition and not bed ridden. In addition, the patients had been suffering from mental weakness, depression, hypertension and asthma respectively. The causes of this disease are thought to be: impact on the faecal materials, troublesome defecation and a mechanical pressure effect on the mucosa. The patients recovered after several weeks through normalization of their bowel habits.
