Surgical after-treatment : a manual of the conduct of surgical convalescence / by L.R.G. Crandon ... with 265 original illustrations.

  • Crandon, L. R. G. (Le Roi Goddard), 1873-
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical after-treatment : a manual of the conduct of surgical convalescence / by L.R.G. Crandon ... with 265 original illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    PREFACE These suggestions for After-treatment of Surgical Cases are written for two classes of practitioners: house surgeons in hospitals and general practitioners in communities which are not surgical centers. Hospitals develop traditions of treatment; the graduating house surgeon is an oracle to the beginning junior officer; the visiting surgeon leaves most of the postoperative detail to the house surgeon, and if the latter has good sense in addition to his academic knowledge, he is able to use the traditions of treatment which he has inherited from his prede- cessor in office wisely, and matters of after-treatment in the wards go on serenely. Traditions and customs, however, may be bad, and it seems unnecessary, if it is avoidable, that each succeeding house officer should have to learn all details of after-treatment empirically and at the patient's expense. It must be admitted that the danger of an arbitrary printed page may be greater than that of a verbal tradition of treatment, but if these pages can serve to show that successful after-treatment, like successful primary treatment, depends first on common sense, that each case should suggest its own after-treatment to some degree, that an arbitrary rule is dangerous, the book will have served its purpose. When the metropolitan surgeon operates in the smaller towns, he leaves the case after operation in the hands of his consultant, who may not be a man of recent hospital experience. For such a man a manual of elastic but detailed directions should be of value. Every procedure herein advised has stood the test of practice and will safely do for the reader until, from his own experience, he develops his own methods. The fact that each surgeon eventually grows into a technique peculiar to himself, and that many differing ways are suc- cessful, should make us liberal in spirit and constantly alert for new truth. No surgical life is so brief but that it has seen new methods ap- pear, vaunted as perfect, pursued for a time, only to fade away. Statistics are given little place, therefore, in this work. It is little comfort to a patient that ninety-out of a hundred with his malady get well. Such a statement contains no assurance that he is not of the ten. Furthermore, we must acknowledge some truth in Christopher Heath's remarks (Brit. Med. Jour., 1892, i, 1243): Of course, we hear of one case that did recover, but do not hear of the ninety and nine cases that