Surgical tracts ... Consisting of I. Outlines of the history of surgery. II. An essay on inflammation and abcess. III. A dissertation on the effects of motion and rest, and their application to the purposes of surgery ... by M. David, with copious ... annotations. IV. Observations on counter-strokes. V. On the methods employed in treating cancerous diseases, including remarks on the cure of indurations of the breast / The whole collected and interspersed with occasional notes and observations by William Houlston.

  • Justamond, J. O. (John Obadiah), -1786
Date:
1789
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical tracts ... Consisting of I. Outlines of the history of surgery. II. An essay on inflammation and abcess. III. A dissertation on the effects of motion and rest, and their application to the purposes of surgery ... by M. David, with copious ... annotations. IV. Observations on counter-strokes. V. On the methods employed in treating cancerous diseases, including remarks on the cure of indurations of the breast / The whole collected and interspersed with occasional notes and observations by William Houlston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This writer alfo gives a very circumftantial account of a wound in the face, which a King of the Goths received from an arrow. The Surgeons were not determined upon the plan they had to purfue. The apprehen- fion of affedting the patient’s eye, of irritating the parts by an operation, and thereby increafing the difeafe, prevented them from extracting the end of the arrow remaining in the wound. One of the Surgeons, how- ever, holder than the reft, having undertaken to do it, made a preflu re upon the King’s eye, who cried out violently, and complained of acute pain. The Surgeon, from this circumftance, foretold the cure, and ac- cordingly making an incifion through the fkin and mufcles, he extracted the foreign body ; after which the wound healed fpeedily, and without accident. But the moft remarkable writer in our profeffion after Galen, was Paulus aEcineta. Authors differ much about the time in which he lived. We fhall however place him, with Dr. Freind, in thefeventh century. Though iie was a great compiler, yet in feveral particulars, efpecially fuch as belong to Surgery, it appears that he was an original writer. Many people have fpoken of him with contempt ; but it is evi- dent, from the manner in which he writes upon the operations, that he muff have performed them himfelf. H is works abound in Surgical improvements, and every circumftance in them relative to this art, is in general treated with more copioufiiefs and precifion than we find in Celsus, Galen, or any preceding writers, fo that he is very injudicioufly ftiled Simla Galerii. In fhort, Paulus AEgineta is one of thofe unfortunate perfons to whom pofterity has by no means done the juftice he deferved. Be this as it may, however, his treatife deferves to be looked upon as the moft complete body of Surgery publifhed before the reiteration of learning. lie is much more full and accurate than Celsus upon feveral articles ; and with regard to lithotomy in particular, he does not forbid the pra&ice of it in a more advanced age than the former allowed of. * .Da Pie