The details of ovariotomy and disputed points in after-treatment / by Alban Doran.

  • Doran, Alban H. G. (Alban Henry Griffiths), 1849-1927.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The details of ovariotomy and disputed points in after-treatment / by Alban Doran. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    By Alban Doran, F.R.C.S., Surgeon to the Samaritan Free FTospital. A Paper read before the Abernetliian Society on November 12 th, 1896. jlVARIOTOMY need no longer be discussed as was the custom between 1858 and 1878. Sir Spencer Wells, who had a larger share than any other surgeon in establishing it as a legitimate operation, gained his point by great attention to matters of detail. In this respect Wells’s method remains the right method—the basis, in fact, of modern abdominal surgery, of which ovariotomy is the type. The merits and demerits of each step in an operation, each instrument, each material for ligature, suture, and so forth, are to be discussed and reported, so that the evil—as in the case of the clamp—may be made clear as well as the good. On the other hand, we may dispense with all arguments, now superfluous, as to the justifiability of ovario- tomy. When such arguments were needed, Wells and others wrote and acted in a manner which was right and necessary then, but not to be imitated by us who live and work, thanks to these authorities, under altered and improved conditions. This evening I will briefly review ovariotomy as now practised. Of course, a complete sketch of the operation would require a short course of lectures ; but I have selected without difficulty much that is suited for the consideration of the members of a society. Diagnosis and after-treatment are inseparably bound up with our subject, especially after-treatment, the more so when we find how success is attained by the most opposite ways of managing the patient after she has left the operating table. After all, diagnosis is only important, at present, in respect to ex- ploration, which is, indeed, a diagnostic agent. An ordinary ovarian cyst, not too closely connected with the uterus, is very easy to detect; but complications may baffle the most experienced clinical observer. Thus menorrhagia in a woman aged about forty, with irregular semi-solicf tumours of both ovaries, with short pedicles, may naturally lead the surgeon to suspect uterine myoma, especially