Head-injuries accompanied by paralysis : a clinical lecture, delivered at the Bellevue Hospital / by Frederic S. Dennis.

  • Dennis, Frederic S. (Frederic Shepard), 1850-1934.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Head-injuries accompanied by paralysis : a clinical lecture, delivered at the Bellevue Hospital / by Frederic S. Dennis. 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.

    12/16 (page 12)
    sion, it is surprising to learn how many eminent surgeons have been, and are even now, opposed to the use of the trephine. Notwithstanding the favorable results from trephining which you have seen from time to time in this clinic, yet there are surgeons who still decry the opera- tion. In Mr. Gamgee’s recent work on the treatment of fractures, one of the most valuable contributions made to the surgery of this subject, and a book which I am sure you will study with great profit and pleasure, you will find a most interesting chapter upon this very ques- tion of trephining. He shows that there is still a very wide diversity of opinion among eminent surgeons upon this point, and that while during the last century the trephine was used extensively, Desault, a French sur- geon, was the first to oppose its use. Percival Pott, an English surgeon, on the other hand, urged its indiscrim- inate use. John Hunter, Pott’s most illustrious pupil, advocated its use, and there were then two distinct classes—on the one side Desault, John Bell, Astley Cooper, Abernethy, Liston, and others argued against its use ; on the other side Pott, Hunter, Guthrie, Brodie, Velpeau, and others argued in its favor. This great controversy influenced in different countries the number of the operations. Thus, during ten years from 1855, there were reported only four cases of trephining in France, while in England during the same period there were reported, according to Le Fort’s analysis, one hun- dred and fifty-seven cases. The late Mr. Callender stated that the trephine had not been used for six years in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, though Mr. Callender was the successor of Percival Pott, through such a line- age as Abernethy, Lawrence, and Paget. This change in the very hospital which was formerly the arena where the trephine was so frequently resorted to, is as strange as it is significant. When we consider how frequently trephining was per- formed in very early times, and with success, assuredly