Anomalous case of lithotomy / by Professor Lizars.

  • Lizars, John, 1787?-1860.
Date:
[1836?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anomalous case of lithotomy / by Professor Lizars. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ANOMALOUS CASE OF LITHOTOMY, BY PROFESSOR LIZARS. A surgeon attached to a large hospital has peculiar opportuni¬ ties for improvement, and he fails of his duty, if he either neglect them, or conceal the useful results of his observation and experi¬ ence. Success, though it flatters vanity, is at best an equivocal proof of merit, for it may happen to the rash and unskilful. Successful cases, in ordinary circumstances, when published, af¬ ford but little information ; cowardice may be unwilling to di¬ vulge the unsuccessful, but these are for the most part our proper instructors ; from these we learn whether nature or art is the more to be blamed for any untoward event; but whether suc¬ cessful or unsuccessful, those cases are invaluable which lead to the detection of such morbid deviations as would certainly occa¬ sion the death of a patient in the hands of a timid or irresolute operator. Of this last class is the following case. James Brown, a healtliy-looking man, fifty-nine years of age, entered the hospital on the 29tli December last, and presented the usual symptoms of stone in the urinary bladder, under which he had laboured during the last eight months. He had been in this hospital seven months ago under the late Professor Turner, who sounded him, but detected no calculus. The day after his admission he was carefully sounded, but no stone was felt ; the bladder was rough and fasciculated. Fie was ordered warm hatlis, leeches to the region of the pubes, the mistura aqua; potass®, the uva ursi, and a seton over the pubes. By these