A manual of operative surgery / By Lewis A. Stimson.

  • Stimson, Lewis Atterbury, 1844-1917.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of operative surgery / By Lewis A. Stimson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    In preparing this Manual, I have sought to render it suffi- ciently complete, as regards both the number of operations described and the details of the descriptions, to meet the wants of the practitioner and of the student; but, on the one hand, I have excluded operations, such as the removal of tumors, which can be described only in general terms; and, on the other, I have tried to avoid that minuteness of detail in non-essentials, which Mr. Syme condemned so vigorously in the teaching of the present day, as the fiddle-faddle in- structions, not only for using, but even for holding, the knife, which sufficiently denote the poverty of intellect whence they proceed, and the lowness in aspiration to which they are ad- dressed. Whenever a knowledge of details, however, has seemed essential to the correct understanding and performance of an operation, I have not hesitated to describe them very fully, and the same principle has governed the introduction of descriptions of the anatomical relations of the parts. It goes without saying that in the preparation of a work of this character very large drafts must be made upon the results of the labor of others, and that the efforts of the writer must be limited, except on rare occasions, to making judicious selec- tions and judicial comparisons. The list of methods and processes is now so large that the surgeon is more likely to advance the science and art of his profession by elaborating the materials and mastering the results already acquired, than by inventing new practices or reinventing old ones. It is not desirable, even if it were possible, to include in a manual every operation, and still less every modification, that has been suggested, and it has been my aim, therefore, either to