Notice of some of the leading events in the life of the late Dr. John Thomson, formerly professor of surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, and of Military Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, and more recently professor of general pathology in the University.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of some of the leading events in the life of the late Dr. John Thomson, formerly professor of surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, and of Military Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, and more recently professor of general pathology in the University. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    performed a series of experiments, from wliicli it appears that, in the animals wliicli were the subjects of them, not only the intes- tine may be returned into the cavity of the abdomen, but the li- gatures which are applied upon it; and that no apprehension need be entertained of these ligatures being separated into that cavity to produce the -inflammatory effects of extraneous bodies, seeing that they arc in fact separated into the intestinal canal, and dis- charged from it by the natural passages. Mr Cooper next pro- ceeds to notice a curious difference in the facility with which a longitudinal and a transverse wound of the intestine unites. It has been shown, he remarks, that transverse wounds heal readily; but with respect to the longitudinal, they have a con- trary tendencyand in illustration of this principle, he quotes the experiments of Dr Thomson, the result of which, he ob- serves, will be found extremely curious. Mr William Wood, in a correspondence with the late Dr Monro, in the course of 1807, mentions that Mr Thomson, in the two courses of his lectures, which he had had the pleasure of at- tending, described at great length the different modes of stitching divided intestines, that had been recommended from the time that Celsus first mentioned the practice to the present day. But in showing the results of his experiments, which Mr Cooper has described, he took particular pains to caution his students from inferring, that, because the practice of stitching intestines had often succeeded in brute animals, and in a few instances also in the human subject, it was one which should be followed in the dis- eased state of the intestines usually accompanying strangulated hernia. This subject of the process of nature in repairing wounds of the intestines was, as is well known, at a subsequent period, very fully discussed in a most valuable monograph by Mr Travers, a gentleman whom Dr Thomson had the great pleasure of num- bering among his pupils, and the still greater pleasure, throughout the whole of his after life, of counting among his friends. Dr Thomson again delivered, during the winter session of 1803-4, his course of lectures on the principles and practice of surgery; and in the succeeding summer (1804') he carried into effect his intention of delivering a short course on military sur- gery. In writing in the subsequent autumn to Mr Keate, he says, I have taken the liberty to inclose for your inspection a short prospectus of a course of lectures on military surgery, which, in addition^to my usual winter course, I gave this last summer at Edinburgh. I trust you will approve of the desire which I have manifested by the delivery of this course, to promote, in as far as in me lies, the good of that department of the public service over which you preside. That I may be able to devote my time exclusively to the learning and teaching of surgery, I intend to 4