Saint Bartholomew's Hospital reports. Part II, In memoriam Charles Barrett Lockwood, 1856-1914 / by W. H. H. J.

Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Saint Bartholomew's Hospital reports. Part II, In memoriam Charles Barrett Lockwood, 1856-1914 / by W. H. H. J. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and a firm believer in the Principles of Surgery, Lockwood heterodox and taking nothing for granted, especially traditions. He is known to many as a phrase-maker, and many are the sayings credited to him. I may mention the following as perhaps original:— “ It is one thing to know, and another thing to impart your knowledge to others.” “ The best text-books are the patients in the out-patient rooms and wards of the Hospital.” “We enter the temple of science through the portals of doubt.” As a surgeon he combined the rare qualities of a bold yet safe operator with those of a good clinician—the former gained from his long apprenticeship in the dissecting room, and the latter from his scientific accuracy and memory for detail. This memory was at times quite remarkable, and always ready at hand. As years go by this clinical tactus is fast disappearing, and it behoves every surgeon to endeavour, like Lockwood, to keep it alive and to discount the knowledge acquired from the modern cram text-book. His prognosis in a case was always very valuable and is illus¬ trated by the saying of one of his ward sisters: “ Whether it’s because he knows more than anybody else or whether it’s be¬ cause things happen simply because he wishes them to happen, he is always right.” No one ever enjoyed his work as Surgeon to the Hospital more, and it has been given to few better to impress common sense on the dressers and students. He was continually instilling into his students the necessity of remembering the many things that are within one’s own control: “ It behoves all of us, at the very beginning, to think out what things surgical are in our control, and what things surgical are not in our control. If we have thought the matter out, and have come to the conclusion that certain things are within our own control, then there is a chance of our controlling them ; but if we have never thought that problem out there will be no control, and no direction of things within our control. Our own thoughts, our own education, our own actions, our own conduct, the organisation and the management of our cases are things under our control.” He attracted always a large attendance at his lectures, which were exceedingly good in the material and care displayed on them. They were attractive from the incisiveness of their de¬ livery, their sound common-sense reasoning, and valuable clinical