The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee.

Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee. 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.

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    acliieved by persistent and well-conducted scientific ex- periment, he would have been one of the loudest in their praise. He was a great surgeon, and as most great surgeons have been, was a warm and tender-hearted and determined fellow, endowed with resource to forge his way, in spite of petty jealousy,—the unconscious homage of impotence to power. No operations are a source of greater regret to surgeons than amputations of the limbs. No advance has been more welcome than the substitution for them of excisions. The mortality attending these is very slight, and experience has demonstrated that a shattered or diseased joint may be resected, and a very useful limb retained. The clinical experience which has brought about these results has been enlightened and powerfully assisted by vivisection. Mr. Syme, to whom this department of surgery is under special obligations, read a paper on the 6th of March, 1837, before the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, “ On the power of the periosteum to produce new bone.”! The question wdiich he proposed to consider was, “ MTiether the periosteum, or membrane that covers the surface of the bones, possesses the power of forming new osseous substance, independently of any assistance from the bone itself ? ” Duhamel had answered in the aflBrmative, nearly a century before, on the basis of vivisections and other experiments, but Haller contested the matter, and professional opinions remained divided in regard to the ossific power of the periosteum. The point in dispute being not merely a matter of curiosity, but one of great practical importance, Mr. Syme thought it very advisable that the truth should be t Contributions to the Pathology and Practice of Surgery, by James Syme, F.R.S.E. Edinburgh, 1848, p 30, et seq