The training of the surgeon : the annual address in medicine delivered at Yale University, June 27, 1904 / by William Stewart Halsted.

  • Halsted, William, 1852-1922.
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The training of the surgeon : the annual address in medicine delivered at Yale University, June 27, 1904 / by William Stewart Halsted. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [275] State. Under special circumstances he might well be per- mitted to visit a patient in another State, if it were impos- sible for that patient to come to him. Private patients in a hospital need consume little or no more of the chief surgeon’s time than the patients in the public wards. While it has been my main purpose in this address to call attention to certain defects in the existing methods of medi- cal education, especially in the opportunities for the advanced training of surgeons in this country, I would not be under- stood to minimize or to decry the great achievements of American surgery. Courage, ingenuity, dexterity, resource- fulness are such prominent characteristics of our country- men that it would have been surprising if from the labors of her many earnest and devoted teachers and practitioners there had not resulted contributions to the science and art of surgery which have carried the fame of American surgery throughout the civilized world. The names of your own Nathan Smith and Jonathan Knight will always be treasured not only by this university, but wUerever the history of sur- gery is cultivated. There is barely time for even the briefest reference to the recent contributions of America’s surgeons to their art and science, but I should do my countrymen scant justice did I fail to emphasize the importance of at least one monumental contribution, which, I believe, re- dounds more to the glory of American surgery than any achievement of the past. It is hardly possible to overesti- mate the value of the modern work on the subject of appen- dicitis nor to attribute to it too great a share in stimulating and clearing the way for the great strides made in the entire field of abdominal surgery in the past twelve or fourteen years. It is convincing testimony to the advanced character of this epochal work that continental surgeons were for sev- eral years unable fully to comprehend and accept the teach- ings of their co-workers in the new countr3^ As operators some of our surgeons are not surpassed by any I have seen; there are, I believe, few operations in surgery which cannot be performed as well in this country as anywhere in the world, and not a few operations are best performed by the surgeons of America.