Excision of the knee joint : a description of a new apparatus for the after treatment ; with illustrative cases / by Patrick Heron Watson.

  • Watson, Patrick Heron, Sir, 1832-1907.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Excision of the knee joint : a description of a new apparatus for the after treatment ; with illustrative cases / by Patrick Heron Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    15/88 (page 9)
    CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF THE APPARATUS AND ITS APPLICATION. Shortly after the restoration of the operation of Excision of the Knee-joint to the list of creditable procedures by the precept and example of Sir William Fergusson, followed by the gratifying suc- cesses which attended upon its practice by Mr Jones of Jersey, the late Dr Richard Mackenzie of Edinburgh performed excision upon four patients suffering from disease of the knee-joint. Two of these were adults, two were adolescents. All these cases came more or less immediately tinder my charge as his house-surgeon. Thus my attention was early directed to the subject, and I confess that, not- withstanding excellent results in the adult patients, I then formed a very unfavourable opinion of the procedure chiefly on two grounds : —1. The extreme difficulty I experienced of maintaining the limb at rest, and in good position, during convalescence ; 2. The risk encountered by the formation of extensive bed-sores during the necessarily long period of confinement to bed, required by the methods of after-treatment of the limb then in use.^ These very manifest practical difficulties certainly gave great countenance to the opinion, then somewhat strongly expressed by the greater part of the profession, against the adoption of the operation as a substitute for amputation, and led to its all but universal rejection by military surgeons. Even one of so fair and judicial a mind as Sir George Ballingall, while he taught the operation in his surgical class, and 1 The apparatus employed by Dr Richard Mackenzie was precisely that more recently recommended by Mr Butcher of Dublin, see page 14. t