Selected papers on injuries and diseases of bone / by Sir William Ireland and C. Wheeler.

  • Wheeler, William Ireland de Courcy, Sir, 1879-1943.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Selected papers on injuries and diseases of bone / by Sir William Ireland and C. Wheeler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/176 (page 19)
    easier the lifting up of the dura. The middle meningeal artery is tied and the dura propria is incised. The afferent root is divided with a specially constructed guillotine and the operation is over. The ganglion is not avulsed nor interfered with, no trophic disturbance follows the operation, therefore it is assumed the trophic centre may be in the ganglion or peripheral to it. Anaesthesia follows in the cornea as is to be expected, but there is never a recurrence of symptoms. One could proceed ad infinitum mentioning points of interest, how the active principle of thyroid secretion was discovered almost by accident in the laboratories after examination of some tons of thyroid obtained from meat factories. This substance administered to hypothyroid and myxodoematous patients pro¬ duced results far in advance of any other known preparation, but was too expensive for general use. Radium is used a week before operation in suitable malignant cases, the interval between application and operation is short owing to the adhesions and cicatrix found when a longer time is allowed to elapse Very small capillary glass tubes are often used containing half a millicurie of radium emanation, and these are left permanently in situ. I was in a laboratory when a demonstration was being made showing that thyroid extract produced by one firm had five times the iodine content of that produced by another. Some popular preparations were useless because bacterial action had probably destroyed the active principle in the drying process to which the gland was subjected. What a lesson to ponder over when we write prescriptions containing the names of drugs, perhaps potent, perhaps not, but always with hieroglyphics and symbols, and thus we carry on the old idea of mysticism associated with the medicine of mediaeval times ! “ You humbugs of doctors/' says one of Charles Reade’s characters, “ couldn't speak plain to save yourselves from hanging. “ After fifteen years given to the science of obscurity Mr. Sawyer literally could not speak plain in one moment. It is suggested to the reader that the science of SEsculapius is guess¬ work, but the patient “ goes on hoping and hoping something from traditional remedies, even when thev fail and fail and fail before his eyes. The surgeon is pictured at each visit feeling the pulse and writing a prescription, “ for it is a tradition of the elders that at each visit the doctor must do some overt act of medicine. Thus thinks the man in the street and he has been justified to some extent in doing so. My last word is to urge the necessity for all in the common