Addresses on surgical subjects / by Sir Berkeley Moynihan.

  • Moynihan, Berkeley Moynihan, Baron, 1865-1936.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Addresses on surgical subjects / by Sir Berkeley Moynihan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    strategy of our next advance. The military leader of to-day seeks help from every branch of science; the victorious leader is he who best knows where to seek the help of which he is in need, who has the genius early and quickly to perceive how all new knowledge can be best applied to the art of war. Surgery, too, is warfare; its advance is conditioned by contemporary progress in every branch of science, and its virtue lies in the number and the vigour of its allies. Into what alliances, then, has surgery entered with other branches of knowledge? The science of physics has brought radiology to our aid, and the discovery of the £-ray has rendered the living body translucent. After an opaque meal these rays dis¬ close the normal movements of the alimentary canal; and we learn, as in no other way, the functional anatomy of the intestine. Any defect of outline may reveal a structural deformity, and perhaps enable us to make a precocious diagnosis of conditions whose terminal stages when neglected are fatal. The art of the chemist can be allied with that of the physicist, as the work of Graham, of St. Louis, has shown, with the result that the physiology of the liver, the func¬ tional anatomy and the pathological conditions of the gall-bladder, the association of gall-bladder activity with movements of the duodenum, may all be studied by a new method. And this method, in alliance with that of the surgeon, realizes another stage in our advance towards the prevention of gall-stones, themselves a tardy result of insidious changes originating elsewhere. Chemistry lends its invaluable aid in discovering for us the functional activity of the kidneys, and by its investigation into the cholesterin and calcium content of the blood is helping