Volume 1

The history of the lateral operation, or an account of the method of extracting a stone, by making a wound near the great protuberance of the os ischium ... first attempted by Frère Jacques ... and afterwards by Professor Rau ... With a postscript concerning the introduction and improvement of this method here in London / By James Douglas.

James Douglas

Date:: 1726

Credit: The history of the lateral operation, or an account of the method of extracting a stone, by making a wound near the great protuberance of the os ischium ... first attempted by Frère Jacques ... and afterwards by Professor Rau ... With a postscript concerning the introduction and improvement of this method here in London / By James Douglas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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22/96 page 14

Patients in the Hands of a Stranger, of whofe Abilities they were alto¬ gether ignorant, defired him firft to make fome Experiments in their Prefence upon dead Bodies, which he readily confented to; and accord¬ ingly, as Monfieur Dionis relates, he perform d his Operation on a Body, into the Bladder of which a Stone had been convey'd before by the Surgeons of the Char it&, but not at all to their Satisfaction. (15) Monfieur Mery> who was appointed by the Firft Prefident of Paris (whom the Leipjick Jourmdifts have miftaken for the Prefident of the Royal Academy,) 16 to infped thefe Experiments of Frere Jaques Operation, fays nothing of any that were perform'd at the Charite y and concerning thofe which he was Witnefs to at the Hotel Dieu, he makes quite a different Judgment from what Dionis fays was made by all the Surgeons who were prefent at that which he mentions. On the 7th Day of December, fays Monfieur Mery, I received Orders from the Firft Prefident to go to the Hotel Dieu, and be prefent at the Extraction of a Stone out of the Bladder of a dead Body by Frere Jacques, He perform'd the Operation in this manner. Having introduced into the Bladder a folid round Staff without a Groove, and of a different Figure from thofe ufed in the old Way of Cutting, he took a Bifloury like the common ones, only longer; and with that made an Incifion on the Left and Infide of the Protuberance of the Jfcbium, and cutting obliquely from below upwards, he divided whatever came in his way between that Protuberance and his Staff* which he kept ftill in the Bladder. His Incifion being finifhed, he thruft his Finger through the Wound into the Bladder, to find out the Stone ; and having obferved where it lay, he introduced an Inftrument into the Bladder, of the Figure hereafter reprefented, to dilate the Wound, that the Stone might have more room to come out. Upon this Dilatory which he calls his Conductor, he thruft in a Pair of Forceps, and then drew out the Conductor ; having felt for and laid hold of the Stone, he pulled the Staff out of the Urethra, then his Forceps and the Stone along with it. All this he did with a wonderful Facility, notwithftanding the Stone was as big as an Hen's Egg.

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