Remarks on pylorectomy : delivered before the Medical Society of London / by Sir William Stokes.

  • Stokes, Sir William, 1839-1900.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on pylorectomy : delivered before the Medical Society of London / by Sir William Stokes. 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.

    6/22 (page 2)
    It is as a rule of equal, perhaps even of greater, import- ance to consider and analyse the probable causes of our surgical defeats than to dwell, as we would naturally de- sire to do, on our surgical triumphs. Had the truth of this not been acknowledged in modern times, many of those brilliant operative achievements which must ever signalise the era in which we live and work would never have been brought to a successful issue, and be now regarded as legiti- mate exercises of our art. In illustration of this, I might indicate several operations now well recognised and fre- quently performed, among which ovariotomy naturally occupies the foremost place—an operation the mortality in which, during its infancy, was almost uniform. Professor Buchanan, of Glasgow, has stated that he remembers the time when one of the most accomplished surgeons of his day publicly asserted that if a surgeon performed ovari- otomy, and it was followed by a fatal result, he might with justice be tried as a criminal charged with culpable homicide,^ and I can recall the fact of' another eminent surgeon, and one of my most respected teachers, who on the completion of one of my ovariotomies, which he witnessed, and the result of which was successful, thanked his God that he had never been called on to perform this operation. By those who have commenced the study and practice of surgery within the past fifteen or twenty years such statements will in truth probably be heard with amaze- ment if not incredulity. Having regard to the fact that pylorectomy must still be considered in its infancy—eleven years only have elapsed since the initial operation was undertaken in Paris by M. Pean—and also to the occasional successes which have been obtained by our Continental brethren, notably Bill- roth, Wolfler, Czerny, and others, we should not, as some are inclined to do, regard the fortress as impregnable, but rather consider what are the probable causes that have militated so strongly against our getting successful results. 1 Brit. Med. Journal, March, 1888,