First 100 years of the Ostomy Part Two!

 Lets back up a bit. Lets start with these photos that I found on the internet. Remember that these items in the archives were ‘modern’ at one time in history. Now they’re no more than antiques, but a lot of time and money, research and development went into them. They were the best you could get way back then. The first pouch similar to today’s plastic bags only appeared after World War II had ended. And, there was no guarantee that these ‘new’ plastic pouches would be odour-proof anyway, so, because these plastic bags looked so flimsy, it took a while before ostomates considered them as alternatives to rubber pouching systems. Plastic would soon be here to stay and become an absolute necessity for ostomates.............
Here are a few of those long-forgotten ostomy appliances. Most of these antiques were very pricey, bulky, heavy and complicated to use. Some were well designed with the ostomate’s well-being in mind. But all the appliances in these photos needed a belt to stay put as Karaya was still in the laboratory!

Lets start with the Rubber Family
We’re going back in time. To the ’30s. Davol was the big name in ostomy appliances, and gum rubber was king.
This first item is a round pouch - how it attached to the flange and what the flange looked like is a mystery. This was made by Davol and was not drainable.

Another Davol product was perhaps the first one-piece drainable pouch that was in common use. Emptying and cleaning the pouch would probably have been a fussy procedure as the flange portion, which was incorporated in the one-piece design, had nooks and crannies that were difficult to clean.

                                                                                                         


Now here’s a deluxe colostomy pouch with comfort as its goal. This was a one-piece non-drainable system. A Rolls-Royce if you will, complete with its own spare tire! As you can see from the photo, it has an inflatable ‘doughnut’ that you can adjust to your comfort level. The only snag was, that if the doughnut deflated, you had to find a gas station or bicycle pump to fix the flat! (Maybe it came with its own mini pump!) Believe it or not, this and other Davol appliances were used even into the 1960s.

This artifact is probably one of the more ‘modern’ pouching systems of the time. A colostomy pouch, consisting of four parts - a nylon ‘frame’, a clear plastic bag fastened to the frame by a ‘gum rubber’ ring and a fabric belt that kept the whole thing from falling off the patient’s abdomen- was in use from the 1950s to 1960s. The size of the opening is so huge that my fist fits through it! One can only imagine the itching and burning of the skin around the stoma.

   


This next device, also from the ’50s and ’60s, is the ‘ABC’ colostomy appliance made by the Canadian company of J.F.Hartz. It was a six piece model! The two photos show the separate pieces. First, there’s of course, the belt and bag. The main piece is a very large and very rigid oval 5 3/4 X 4 1/4 inch nylon flange with a two inch diameter opening in the middle. Then we have a spring wire belt harness twisted to make four loops for attaching a belt. A clear plastic ring with a short spring is used to keep the bag tightly in place (two small screws keep the short spring in place!) Then there’s  another smaller clear ring (also held on by two small screws) between the flange and the outer ring. 

        Irrigation System called “The Bowman Improved Colostomy Apparatus.”

    The simple concept was: fill the stainless steel jug with warm water and hang the jug two feet above the toilet. After sitting on the toilet, attach the irrigation cup over your stoma using the belt provided (a rubber catheter allowed the water to enter the stoma), and irrigate until you start to feel cramps. Allow the bowel to empty back into the cup and down the toilet by way of a large diameter rubber hose attached below the cup.


 
Appliance manufacturers have always been at work developing high quality appliances for the sake of ostomates. Although the horrors of the past have not yet completely gone,  we now live in a ‘plastic society’ that changes by the second. We also live in an age of Spandex, high fashion and form-fitting clothes and we strive for freedom and good physical health, so ostomy appliances have to be lightweight, discreet, and not one-size-fits-all, unlike those from the past. I guess I can thank my luckey stars for people like my grandmother who had to undure these products so that today the I could have a safe and and comfortable !

                                                        Link to article http://www.stomaatje.com/