A few words on the surgical treatment of the case of the late Sir Robert Peel / By a country surgeon.

Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few words on the surgical treatment of the case of the late Sir Robert Peel / By a country surgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    A FEW WORDS ON THE SURGICAL TREATME OF THE CASE OF THE LATE SIR ROBERT PEEL. By a Country Surgeon. It is with unfeigned reluctance, and in obedience alone to an imperative sense of duty, that, while expressing our deep and heartfelt regret at the calamitous death of England’s great statesman, we feel compelled to com ¬ ment upon the singular course of tieat- ment—if, indeed, the facts of the case can be said to warrant the use of the term—resorted to by the medical and surgical attendants of the late Sir Robert Feel. The very first step taken after the occurrence of the unfortunate accident, viz., the conveyance of the patient to his own residence, in a carriage, was injudicious in the extreme. The acci¬ dent had happened in the immediate vicinity of St. George’s Hospital, and the most natural and rational course of proceeding would have been to procure a stretcher-bed from that hospital, and to carry the patient instanter to the accident ward, where the extent of the injuries received might have been readily ascertained, and the proper treatment resorted to,before the return of consciousness and sensibility could have interfered with the necessary manipu¬ lations. Had the accident happened to a man in a humble station of life, this simple and obvious course of proceeding would have been adopted without the slightest hesitation, and the life of the patient would most probably have been saved thereby. But in this instance, it appears that the lamented baronet was made to pay the penalty of his rank and position. The hospital could not be thought of for a man of Sir Robert Peel’s station, and so Dr. Foucart, with whom rests, of course, the entire blame and onus of this part of the proceedings, thought proper to advise his immediate removal to his private residence in a carriage, without endeavouring even to ascertain first whether the nature of the injuries received by the fall would permit the employment of this mode of conveyance with perfect safety to the patient. We feel tempted here to ask Dr. Foucart, whether he would have advised re¬ moval in a carriage,had he known at the time that a comminuted fracture of the clavicle existed? We should imagine, not.—However, a carriage having been procured, the unfortunate sufferer was lifted up and hoisted into it. Now, it is not at all unlikely that in the per¬ formance of this act and of the subse¬ quent one of lifting Sir Robert out of the carriage, the hands of one of the gentlemen assisting in it may have pressed heavily against the ribs, more particularly in the region of the 4th, 5th, and 6th, and that the broken ends of the fifth rib on the left side, which after death wa3 ascertained to be frac¬ tured, may thus have been actually forced down upon the lung. The attempt which Sir Robert made in the carriage to raise himself up, and which it was thought necessary to prevent, was pro¬ bably prompted by a species of instinctive impulse to free himself from the grasp of his injudicious supporters. We are told that, on being lifted out of the carriage, Sir Robert revived, and walked, with assistance into the house. The same gentlemen then, Sir James Clark and Dr. Foucart, who had deemed it neces¬ sary to interfere with Sir Robert’s endea¬ vour to raise himself up, seem to have acquiesced afterwards in his attempt to walkandto ascend thesteps leading to the door of his mansion. Their acquiescence in this suffices to prove that at the time, they could not have even the most remote notion of the nature of the injuries received by their illustrious patient, which every step taken up to this time could only tend to aggravate. At last, after a most painful meeting between Sir Robert and his wife and family, which, under the circumstances, it would have been the wisest course to prevent since it could hardly be ex¬ pected to produce any but an un¬ favourable effect upon a patient of Sir Robert’s sensitive organization, we find the unfortunate sufferer deposited on a sofa in the dining-room of his mansion, and surrounded by six physicians and surgeons, most of them of the highest professional reputation. Now, one would have thought that in the hands of men like Sir Benjamin