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.

    3/28
    THE TRAINING OF THE SURGEON/ By William Stewart Halsted, Frofeuor of Surgery, The Johns Hopkins University. Pain, hemorrhage, infection, the three great evils which [267] had always embittered the practice of surgery and checked its progress, were, in a moment, in a quarter of a century (1846-1873) robbed of their terrors.’ A new era had dawned; and in the thirty years which have elapsed since the gradu- ation of the class of 1874 from Yale, probably more has been accomplished to place surgery on a truly scientific basis than in all the centuries which had preceded this wondrous period. The macula levis notoe clung to surgeons the world over until the beginning of the nineteenth century, although distinguished and scholarly men, as well as charlatans and barbers, have practiced the art in almost unbroken succes- sion from the time of Hippocrates (460-375 B. C.) to the present day. A warning for all time against satisfaction with present achievement and blindness to the possibilities of future development is the imperishable prophecy of the famous French surgeon, Baron Boyer, who over a hundred years ago declared that surgery had then reached almost, if not actually, the highest degree of perfection of which it was capable.’ »The Annual Address In Medicine delivered at Yale University, June 27, 1904. • Verhandlungen der deutschen Ges. f. Chlrurgle, 1896, von Esmarch. • Could Boyer, we ask, have been satisfied with the status of surgery when anesthesia was undiscovered, when hemorrhage was awkwardly and insufficiently controlled, when infection of wounds was not understood and could not be prevented? And yet I might quote from the writings of distinguished men of our time to show that even to-da.v some think that surgery Is almost complete. Anaesthesia, one of the greatest bless- ings, is at the same time one of our greatest reproaches, hemorrhage Is still awkwardly checked, and of surgical infection once started we