The principles of surgery : clinical, medical, and operative an original analysis of pathology systematically conducted, and a critical exposition of its guidance, at the bedside and in operations ... / by Frederick James Gant.

  • Gant, Frederick James, 1825-1905.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of surgery : clinical, medical, and operative an original analysis of pathology systematically conducted, and a critical exposition of its guidance, at the bedside and in operations ... / by Frederick James Gant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the Gothic style were visible beneath the faciugs of the modern building; and in the construction of even the most recent manuals of Practical Surgery in this country, the basis is, I conceive, too purely Anatomical. The alliance of ' Surgical Operations' with a series of ' Dis- sections' is scarcely less unnatural than would be a marriage of the living with the dead ; and as ill-assorted is the association of dissecting instruments with surgical armamentaria. Yet such are the unavoidable inconsistencies that the Anatomical method would impose upon us. Books of the class to which 1 allude would be less inconsistent were they intended solely for the use of those who may require to gain a mechanical knowledge of Operative Surgery, so far as this can be learnt in the dissecting-room, by handling instruments, making incisions of various shapes, and performing other simple mechanical operations on parts presenting their healthy relations to each other, and bereft of their living appearances and con- ditions ; but the guidance of (pure) Anatomy acquires a positively fatal tendency when practices on the dead subject, and matured perchance in the dissecting-room, are imported into Surgical works, and are ostensibly converted into (Surgical) Operations on parts in a diseased state, aud as found in living patients. This evil inclination to the guidance of Anatomy alone is gradually eradicated, and the application of Pathology during Surgical Operations and manipulations acquired, by repeated observation of the peculiar relative position, physical properties, and living conditions presented by textures and parts, as succes- sively seen and felt during Surgical operations, and not as they are exposed by dissection in the dead subject. True it is, that certain exceptional operations—e.g., amputations and the ligature of ■ arteries for aneurism—are executed at a distance more or less remote from the diseased or injured part; but even such opera- tions have been fashioned too much after the dead model—an error as grave as were a sculptor to presume to chisel the propor- tions of the living body by glances at a dead subject. In short—