A treatise on operative surgery : comprising a description of the various processes of the art, including all the new operations; exhibiting the state of surgical science in its present advanced condition ... / by Joseph Pancoast.

  • Joseph Pancoast
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on operative surgery : comprising a description of the various processes of the art, including all the new operations; exhibiting the state of surgical science in its present advanced condition ... / by Joseph Pancoast. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/570
    ADVERTISEMENT. The necessity of thoroughly illustrating the operations of Surgery, has been felt from the earliest periods of the art, as a means of rendering the processes for their performance, intelligible to the student. Almost every modern surgeon of distinction, and especially Camper, Scarpa, Cooper, Hesselbach, Bell, and Dupuytren, have, in par¬ ticular departments of the science, contributed much to the attainment of this most desirable end. The attempt to collect the newest and completest modes of illustration into a continuous whole, has been made but in twm * instances,—by M. Froriep of Berlin, who has issued them in numbers without any other regard to order than the time of their appearance, and by M. Bourgery of Paris. The voluminous and expensive character of these works, and especially of the latter, which is as yet but little more than half completed, as well as their being clothed in a foreign language, renders them in a great degree inaccessible to the American surgeon. With these admirable treatises before him as a guide, and having at hand the greater portion of the surgical works, which have recently appeared in various languages, and with the advantage which nine years continuous service in one of the largest hospitals of North America has given him, not only in comparing to a certain extent the value of the different methods, but in enabling him to obtain a large number of accurate drawings of operations which have been done by his own hand, the author has endeavoured to furnish a work that shall represent, so far as its limits will allow, the operative surgery of the day. In pursuance of this desire to portray the actual state of the science, many processes of operation have been given, for which the author cannot hold himself any farther responsible, than of having made of them a clear and impartial statement, drawn from the most authentic sources. The description of processes, too often given obscurely by their inventors, is confessedly difficult, and the author has not hesitated, wffien he believed he could thereby render their details more plain, to risk occasional repetition. The drawings, in almost every instance, have been represented in such a point of view, that the examiner may, in the stage of the process immediately shown, consider himself as the operator. In order to render the work still more useful to the practitioner, a brief but comprehensive description of the surgical anatomy of the parts immediately concerned has been added, as well also as some account of the patholo¬ gical changes, when this was deemed necessary to the comprehension of the operation in question. It has not, however, been possible to enter into a discussion of the claims of different surgeons to particular processes, or to detail in full the therapeutical management of surgical affections, which would have expanded the work to an immoderate size. Some brief observations have, however, in the latter respect been given, in order to assist those in forming opinions who have not other means at hand for consultation, but without invalidating the claims of this work to be especially considered as a Practical Treatise on Operative Surgery. In the prospectus, the work was announced as consisting only of seventy plates, containing two hundred and fifty separate figures, with from two hundred to two hundred and fifty pages of illustrative text. But as these limits were found too restricted for so copious a subject, the publishers, with a liberality that does them honour, have consented, without increasing the price to subscribers at the time of publication, to its extension to its present dimensions, which will be found to consist of eighty quarto plates, comprising four hundred and eighty-six separate illustrations, and three hundred and eighty quarto pages of description.
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