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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    [268] sufferiBg of the patient, the desperation and haste of the surgeon, conditions not suited to the tranquil pursuit of physiological knowledge. In all times, even to the present day, the surgeon’s chief concern during an operation has been the management of the blood vessels. The fear of death on the table from hemor- rhage has deterred many a charlatan and incompetent sur- geon from performing otherwise perilous operations. The care exercised in the control of hemorrhage may constitute the chief dilference between a rapid and a slow operator. This was eminently the ease in the days within my experience when two or three artery clamps were considered abundant for operations which now require one or even two hundred. The five things declared by Pare, usually designated as the father of French surgery, as proper to the duty of a sur- geon may serve to indicate how restricted was the field of surgery before the course travelled by the blood was deter- mined : 1. To take away that which is superfluous, as in amputa- tions. 2. To restore to their places such things as are displaced, as in hernias. 3. To separate those things which are joined together, as in parts rendered adherent by burns. 4. To join parts which are separated, as in stitching up a wound. 5. To supply the defects of nature, as in setting an eye, an ear, a nose, or one or more teeth; filling up the hollowness of a defective palate with a gold or silver plate. The studies of Hunter, born just one hundred years after Harvey published (1628) his demonstration of the circula- tion of the blood, and about seventy years after Malpighi dis- covered the capillaries, on the healing of wounds, on inflam- mation, on the ligation of arteries, were made possible by the discoveries of these great investigators. John Hunter’s (1728-1793) name is eclipsed by that of no other surgeon, and for the fame of his contributions, particularly to biology and physiology, an inextinguishable lamp will forever burn.