Introductory address delivered at the opening of the thirty-ninth session of the Medical Department of Georgetown University, on the recent advances in abdominal surgery / by Joseph Taber Johnson.

  • Johnson, Joseph Taber, 1846-1921.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address delivered at the opening of the thirty-ninth session of the Medical Department of Georgetown University, on the recent advances in abdominal surgery / by Joseph Taber Johnson. 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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    Thus it would, in this day, be considered in the nature of a crime for a surgeon to perform an ovariotomy when fresh from a post- mortem examination, or cases of erysipelas, or gangrene, or dressing foul-smelling wounds—which they are more or less constantly called upon to do; or for a physician to attend an abdominal section the same day he had visited cases of scarlet fever, puerpeial septicaemia, or diphtheria. So likely are these subtile poisons to be conveyed to the absorbing surface of the peritoneum, where they set up diseased processes which quickly pass beyond control, that many abdominal surgeons now require that visitors at their operations shall sign a declaration that they “have been free from contact with any of the above-named contagious influences for a period of seven days.” Those who are most strict in these and other matters of “cleanly and antiseptic surgery” have the best results. Ovariotomy, from being one of the. most fatal of the capital operations, has now grown to be the most successful. A few special abdominal surgeons have brought their mortality down to less than five per cent. There is no other surgical procedure of equal gravity which stands any compar- ison with the successful performance of ovariotomy to-day, even if we place its mortality at fifteen or twenty per cent. This operation was first performed by our countryman, Dr. Ephraim McDowel, in December, 1809, in Danville, Ky., upon a Mrs. Craw- ford, who made a good recovery, and lived for thirty-two years after- wards. Dr. McDowel did not publish his success until he had per- formed three operations, and these were several years apart. His statements at first were not believed, as medical men and medical editors did not then think it possible that an ovarian tumor could be successfully removed through an opening in the abdominal walls. In the next twenty years few operations were performed in this country and none at all abroad. Those who had the courage and the neces- sary skill to undertake it were denounced and vilified, and by some adjudged guilty of malpractice, and the public warned against them as rash and dangerous surgeons. It would be interesting and perhaps instructive to devote the entire evening to the history, and progress and improvements, and the pres- ent technique of ovariotomy alone, but I shall leave these particular points to be studied in our lectures during the winter. As I have so many other advances in Abdominal Surgery to refer to, I can only, in passing, make a general remark upon them all, or such of them as time and your patience will permit.