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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    [267] Tempted to belittle by comparisons the performances of our progenitors, we should remember that the condition of surgery has at all times reflected the knowledge and thought of the ablest minds in the profession. We may well recall the admonition so gently given by the highly talented von Volkmann, who was also a popular poet, writing under the pseudonym of Eichard Leander, “Hocli aufhebt Schnee-schimmernd das Haupt in die Wolken die Jungfrau, Aber sie deckt mit dem Fuss ein unendliches Land.” Surgery, like other branches of the healing art, has fol- lowed in its progress zigzag paths, often difficult to trace. Now it has seemed to advance by orderly steps or through the infliience of some master mind even by bounds; again it has stumbled apparently only from error to error, or has [268] even receded; often there has appeared some invention or discovery for which the time was not ripe and which had to await for its fruitful application or perhaps its rediscovery a more favorable period, it might be centuries later. There is a most intimate interdependence of physiology, pathology and surgery. Without progress in physiology and pathology, surgery could advance but little, and surgery has paid this debt by contributing much to the knowledge of the pathologist and physiologist, never more than at the present time. Harvey’s immortal discovery marks an epoch for sur- gery, as it does for all medicine, for without knowledge of the circiflation of the blood only the most primitive kind of surgery is thinkable. And yet there is abundant proof that the ligation of vessels, with the introduction of which Am- brose Pare (1517-90) has until recently been accredited. have often little control and then mainly by means of the knife. We have reason to hope that the day will come when hemorrhage will be controlled by a quicker procedure than the awkward, time-consuming ligature; when infections will be controlled by specific products of the laboratory ; and when pain will be prevented by a drug which will have an affinity only for the definite sensory cells which it is desirable it should affect. The first of these may be last and the last first. Let us trust that it may, as Gross expresses it, “ be a long time before the laws of this department of the healing art will be as Immutable as those of the Medes and Persians.” “ Literature,” said Horace Walpole. “ has many revolutions : if an author could rise from the dead after a hundred years what would be his sur- prise at the adventures of his work.” Gross recognized, not altogether without regret, that this was particularly true of scientific works how- ever erudite thev may be. “ Few survive their authors.” * * Gross. Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 140.