Copy 1, Volume 2

The chirurgical works of Percival Pott ... to which are added a short account of the life of the author, a method of curing the hydrocele by injection and occasional notes and observations by Sir James Earle / [Percivall Pott].

  • Pott, Percivall, 1714-1788.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The chirurgical works of Percival Pott ... to which are added a short account of the life of the author, a method of curing the hydrocele by injection and occasional notes and observations by Sir James Earle / [Percivall Pott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been so cultivated in our times as to convert ignorance into a vice, and to render those who are deficient in it perfectly inexcusable. As this is the only true and solid basis from which all chirurgical knowledge must for ever spring, so it has of late years been productive of many real and great improvements in the art. . The ancient surgery was coarse, and loaded with a farrago of external applications, some of which were horridly, and yet unnecessarily painful, and others altogether useless; whilst the operative part of the art was encumbered with a multitude of aukward unmanageable instruments, and pieces of machinery. The practitioners of the present time have brought the practice into a much narrower compass, have rendered itless painful and more intelligible; they have reduced the number of instruments, and by the extreme simplicity of those which they now use, they have considerably assisted the dexterity of an operator, and shortened the time of an operation ; they have almost thrown aside the burning cautery, and are much more sparing in the use of caustic appli- cations than their predecessors used to be; they now accomplish many cures by mildand gentle means, which formerly were thought not obtainable but by much severity; to say nothing of the indelible marks which such practice left behind it. The havoc formerly made both of limbs and lives, by the use of long forceps in gun-shot wounds; the explosion of the long-prevailing notion that such wounds were.