Address on the progress and dignity of the medical profession : delivered before the trustees, faculty, students and friends of the Starling Medical College at its annual commencement, February 17, 1849 / by B.T. Cushing.

  • Cushing, B. T.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address on the progress and dignity of the medical profession : delivered before the trustees, faculty, students and friends of the Starling Medical College at its annual commencement, February 17, 1849 / by B.T. Cushing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    muscle of the human body which anatomy has not ex- plored. She has laid bare the secrets of nature's most wonderful mechanism—taken the manikin apart as a skillful silversmith would a chronometer, looked at the handiwork of the Almighty as at a watch or a cot- ton gin! She has studied the healthy uses of each organ, and its states of disorder and weakness. She beholds in the heart a forcing pump—in the lungs an instrument of chemical purification for the blood—in the brain a source of nervous activity and thought. Nor do her triumphs pause here. The discoveries of Ambrose Pare have driven the boiling pitch, red hot searing irons, and caustic vitriol, which rendered ampu- tation as terrible as death, from our hospitals and ope- rating rooms ; and the improvement of Hunter, by which a ligature may be drawn around the artery above the place of incision, has rendered operations, formerly regarded most dangerous, comparatively easy. Limbs are now removed, new features constructed, tumors, through which the carotid and femoral arteries pass, can be cut away—the internal organism of the body is entered, and the House of Life invaded with fearful temerity. Tumors have been cut from the breast, when the liga- tures restraining the blood had to be passed, almost around the heart itself. When operations so grand and terrific are on record, why need I allude to the more delicate and beautiful] To those upon the eye for cataract \ To the creation of a new pupil, when the old one has been obscured by disease, by the passage of an instrument through the ball of the eye, opening a new window for light ? To the entering of the larynx by a probang, with a solution of nitrate of silver, in