Modern abdominal surgery : the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, December 18th, 1890 : with an appendix on the castration of women / by Sir T. Spencer Wells.

  • Wells, Spencer, 1818-1897.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern abdominal surgery : the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, December 18th, 1890 : with an appendix on the castration of women / by Sir T. Spencer Wells. 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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    Mr. President and Gentlemen,—Some who hear me to-day— I fear not many—may remember the condition of Abdominal Surgery in the .early part of the Victorian age, forty or fifty years ago. Younger men may easily inform themselves on the subject by referring to the surgical dictionaries and text-books of the period ; and all must acknowledge that the contrast with the Abdominal Surgery of our own time—with what we may call Modem Abdominal Surgery—is very remarkable. An occasional operation for strangulated hernia was almost the only piece of abdominal surgical work done in those days. The radical cure of hernia had scarcely begun to attract attention. Astley Cooper had tied the abdominal aorta, and a case of Caesarean section, when it was heard of, was talked of by the profession and the public as a marvel. A gunshot or other penetrating wound of the abdomen was rarely met with in civil practice ; and there, with the occasional formation of an artificial anus, Abdominal Surgery may be said to have reached its boundaries ; for neither then nor now have operations on the rectum, nor removal of stone from the bladder until quite recently, been classed as parts of Abdominal Surgery. Take Syme’s c Principles of Surgery’ as an example. In the fourth edition, published in 1856 (a book which he says in his preface is the result of thirty years’ hospital experience, and has been tried by a long succession of pupils at home and abroad), the surgery of the abdomen is treated in twenty-eight pages, four of which are devoted to wounds; penetrating wounds, he says, being almost certainly fatal. One page given to tapping, twelve to hernia, and a few lines on iliac abscess complete Syme’s survey of Abdominal Surgery in 1856. Compare this with the recent