Edinburgh medicine of seventy years ago.

Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Edinburgh medicine of seventy years ago. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    work as assistant to Syme, and as a lecturer in Edinburgh. Syme’s pioneer work in the excision of diseased joints is only less well known than the introduction of antiseptic surgery by this earnest young Quaker, who became his son-in-law, and who succeeded him as Professor of Clinical Surgery in 1869. Sir Charles Bell had been a lecturer at Edinburgh in early life, then he had been a surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, Plate showing the Group of “ Bespiratory Nerves.” amplifying his income by re¬ ceiving resident students into his house in London: finally, he returned to Edinburgh, where he held the Chair of Surgery from 1886 to 1842. Bell, though in life he enjoyed only moderate success, either as a teacher or as a consultant, has left behind him one of the greatest reputations in British medicine as a surgeon, physi¬ ologist, artist, and man of cul¬ ture. Various works—e.g., his “ Institutes of Surgery ”, and his “Nervous System of the Human Body ”—were pub¬ lished by Messrs. A. and C. Black, and his works possess the distinction of having been (Drawn by C. Bell for his “ Nervous illustrated by llis own brush System. ) and pencil, which gives to them a double value. He was followed in the Chair of Surgery by Professor James Miller, and he in turn by Professor James Spence, both of whom wrote textbooks on surgery for Messrs. Black. The following quotation from Bell’s “ Institutes of Surgery” illustrates how new to surgery the operation for excision of a joint still was, even at the end of his life: “ One more important discussion remains under this section. It regards the excision of diseased joints. The idea was suggested by