Address of John Marshall, F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1884.

  • Marshall, John, 1818-1891.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of John Marshall, F.R.S., President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, at the annual meeting, March 1st, 1884. 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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    bably imperfectly assisted negi'esses on tlie neighbouring plantations, tm'ned his attention to that injury, and in- duced him to make persevering attempts to cure it by operation. After haying repeatedly failed, as he con- cluded, through the use of silk sutures, he tried silver wire, and then met with great success. By further improve- ments in many details,—as in the form of the speculum employed, and in the modes of paring the edges of the wound, of introducing and securing the silver wires, of supporting the sides of the wound, and of ensuring the constant evacuation of the urinary bladder,—he at last obtained the most brilliant results. Other Surgeons had, no doubt, preceded him in the performance of this opera- tion, and some of his coadjutors, more especially Dr. Bozeman, shared the merit of introducing certain im- portant improvements in it; but from his great ingenuity, his unremitting perseverance, and his manual dexterity, his personal achievements were pre-eminent, and his name has been and will continue to be especially remembered in connection with this great triumph of the Surgical art. Having moved, in 1853, from Montgomery to New York, Dr. Sims practised for about a dozen years in the last-named city, during which period, however, he visited Europe; and he so frequently expounded and demon- strated his mode of operating, at different hospitals in Dublin, London, Brussels, and Paris, and was so frequently consulted by private patients, that he became recognised as almost a European practitioner. It was not alone by this one operation that Dr. Sims gained his widely-spread reputatiou, or conferred the greatest benefit on womaukind. It was thi'ough his in- struinentahty that the New York State Women's Hospital was founded. He was its first Physician, and he contri- buted largely to the acknowledged eflficiency of that important Institution, which has, indeed, formed a centre from which so much and such beneficial scientific and practical knowledge has been diffused through the whole of the United States. From his labours in this field. Dr.