Use of the dead to the living.

  • Smith, Southwood, 1788-1861.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Use of the dead to the living. 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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    i from those sources of improvement which extensive practice may open to him. To the surgeon, anatomy is eminently what Bacon has so beautifully said knowledge in general is : it is power—it is power to lessen pain, to save life, and to eradicate diseases, which, without its aid, would be incurable and fatal. It is impossible to convey to the reader a clear conception of this truth, without a re- ference to particular cases ; and the subject is one of such extreme importance, that it may be worth while to direct the attention for a moment to two or three of the capital diseases which the surgeon is daily called upon to treat. Aneurism, for example, is a disease of an arterj^ and consists of a preternatural dilatation of its coats. This dilatation arises from debility of the vessel, wlience, una])le to resist the impetus of the blood, it yields, and is dilated into a sac. When once the disease is induced, it commonly goes on to increase with a steady and uninterrupted progress, until at last it suddenly bursts, and the patient expires either instantaneously from loss of blood, or by degrees from repeated losses. When left to itself, it almost uniformly proves fatal in one or other of these modes ; yet, before the time of Galen, no notice was taken of this terrible malady. The ancients, indeed, who believed that the arteries were air tubes, could have had no conception of the existence of an aneurism. Were the number of indi- viduals in Europe, who are now annually cured of aneurism, by the interference of art, to be assumed as the basis of a calculation of the number of persons who must have perished by this disease, from the beginning of the world to the time of Galen, it would convey some conception of the extent to which anato- mical knowledge is the means of saving human life. The only way in which it is possible to cure this disease is, to produce an obliteration of the cavity of the artery. This is the object of the operation. The diseased artery is exposed, and a ligature is passed