Murphy Drip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_drip

At the beginning of the 20th century, entrepreneurial American surgeon John Benjamin Murphy devised
a drip method of introducing saline solution through the rectum in the treatment of patients with peritonitis (Rutkow 2001). Since then, this infusion technique, known as proctoclysis, or the ?Murphy drip?, has been used to rehydrate and deliver medication in solution.
With the advent of the first world war, medical developments were required urgently for the management of battlefield injuries. Concerned that the blood volume of soldiers recovering from blood loss was returning to normal too slowly, Robertson and Bock (1919) concluded that, if fluids were introduced through the rectal mucosa, the circulating blood volume could be increased.