Then and now : a discourse introductory to the forty-third course of lectures in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia / by S.D. Gross.

  • Gross, Samuel D. (Samuel David), 1805-1884.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Then and now : a discourse introductory to the forty-third course of lectures in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia / by S.D. Gross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Bennet the world owes an immense debt of gratitude; to the for¬ mer for the important services which he has rendered to the ope¬ rative surgery of the genito-urinary apparatus of the female; to the latter for his masterly work on inflammation of the uterus, originally issued in 1845, in which he was the first to make known to the physicians of Great Britain and the United States the diag¬ nosis and treatment of the organic diseases of the womb, until then very imperfectly understood, and for the most part wretchedly mismanaged. To my former colleagues Professor Charles D. Meigs, for many years one of the chief pillars of this school, Professor Henry Miller, the distinguished obstetrician of Kentucky, and Professor Gunning S. Bedford, the able teacher and writer, great credit is due for their exertion to popularize the use of the specu¬ lum in this country. Professor White, of Buffalo, a gentleman ever alive to the progress of science, and the interests of humanity, also deserves honorable mention in connection with this subject. Ovariotomy, a conquest of modern times, is an American ope¬ ration, first practised in 1809, by Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky. He performed the operation altogether about thirteen times with a success highly flattering to his skill. After a Pip-van-Winkle sleep of nearly a quarter of a century, ovariotomy woke up one morning and found itself suddenly famous. Revived by Mr. Clay, of Manchester, it has, mainly through the influence of his labors and writings, become one of the most common of the capital operations, and is almost univer¬ sally acknowledged as one of the greatest triumphs of modern surgery. The mortality, now that the after-treatment is so well understood, is much less than formerly, the ratio being about one death in three cases and a half, thus comparing most favorably with the results of many of the more severe operations. Valuable improvement has been effected in the treatment of puerperal peritonitis. Instead of copious abstractions of blood with the lancet, thereby draining the system rapidly of its vital fluid at a time when it can be ill-spared, most practitioners at the present day place their chief reliance upon the exhibition of opium in large and frequently repeated doses, and upon the application of leeches and of stupes of turpentine and laudanum to the abdo¬ men. For the introduction of the opium treatment of this disease we are mainly indebted to Professor Alonzo Clark, of Hew York. The practice of midwifery, properly so called, has experienced many salutary changes. The use of anaesthetics, and a better comprehension of the powers of nature, have greatly simplified the duties of the accoucheur, and have furnished him with more enlightened views of the mechanism of parturition.^ The forceps, that “ noble instrument,” to use the designation of Chapman, the original inventor, were seldom employed thirty-five years ago, except in cases of very tedious labor, and even then compara¬ tively infrequently, nature being generally regarded as fully com¬ petent to the task of expelling the child without such aid. In a long practice of this kind, at one time quite extensive, I never-