Extract from Medical Times of 24th May, 1851.

  • Scrutator.
Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extract from Medical Times of 24th May, 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    4/8 (page 2)
    maxillary bone, led me to adopt the motto prefixed to this communication ; and I feel confident, from your character as an independent and faithful journalist, that you will not hesitate to give publicity to my narrative. Prior to 182C, the mode of treating malignant tumours, seated in the antrum, consisted in partial excision of the diseased parts, and in their destruction by means of caustics, cautery, &c. As all these means had failed to arrest the progress of this destructive and painful species of tumour, it occurred to Pro- fessor Lizars, that the entire extirpation of the superior maxillary bone itself, held out the only reasonable prospect of relief Accordingly, in the letter- press attached to Part IX. of his System of Anatomical Plates, —a work highly and justly celebrated — he has explained his reasons for suggesting such an operation, and given full, minute, and circumstantial details of the mode in which it should be performed. The preface bears date 1825, which is upwards of three years antecedent to Mr. Syme's case in 1829. Professor Lizars also showed the gi*eat advantage of the operation over every other mode of remov- ing the disease, and obviated the objections which might be raised against it. The following quotation will be sufficient to substantiate his claim of origi- nating the operation — I am, therefore, decidedly of opinion, that imless we remove the whole diseased surface, which can only be done by taking away the entire superior maxillary bone, we merely tamper with the disease, put our patient to excruciatuig suffering, and ultimately to death. (P. 58.) But Mr. Syme has suppressed all knowledge of such information, and in his pub- lished account of the case operated upon by him, and of the reasons that led him to resort to and adopt the operation, he acknowledges no authority but his own. With what a different spirit was the noble-minded Listen actuated, when he spoke of his colleague's claims, in his Observations on Tumours of the Mouth and Jaws — a paper read before the Royal Medical and Chirur- gical Society of London, and published in the Medico-Chirurgical Transac- tions for 1836. The merit, says he, of suggesting the possibility and advantage of removing the entire maxillary bone when the seat of disease, is, without doubt, due to Professor Lizars, for several years my colleague in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The proposal, with directions for the operation, was published in his anatomical work, dated 182a. But Mr. Liston was inca- pable of any dishonourable appropriation, for his houest heart and honourable reputation equally despised and disowned the paltry and pilfering acts of detraction. M. Gensoul, a name in surgery not behind that of Dupuytrens, has, at page 12 of his Lettre Chirurgicale sur quelques Maladies graves du Sinus MaxUlaire, acknowledged Professor Lizars' claim. The merit there- fore of originating the operation, and showing its mode of performance, is due alone to Professor Lizars, aud it is but an act of justice, that any attempt of indirectly transferring that honour to another, by evasion or suppression of the truth, should be exposed. In accordance with his views, Mr. Lizars had re- course to tliis operation in 1827, for a medullary sarcomatous tumour of the antrum ; but was prevented completing it by the ha)morrhagic disposition of the gum and palate, though he had previously secured the common carotid artery of the affected side. The patient lost upwards of two pounds of blood in a few seconds, the blood welling out at every incision, as if there had been