Inaugural address on gynaecology in relation to surgery / by Alban Doran.

  • Doran, Alban H. G. (Alban Henry Griffiths), 1849-1927.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural address on gynaecology in relation to surgery / by Alban Doran. 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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    extensive colonies over which the suu never sets, all contributing vast funds of scientific facts and priceless knowledge, gleaned from varieties of the human race living under every modification of climate, habits, and grades of civilisation ; and furnishing us with such an amount of accumulated science as will raise this Society to the loftiest pinnacle of dignity and importance.” This somewhat florid prediction of Dr. Rigby’s has come true. He little knew—which is a form of speech signify- ing that he did not know at all—how near was the advent of ovariotomy as an established operation. I need not criticise the “ minor gynaecology ” and “ gynaecological therapeutics ” of 1859 ; we have improved, as our suc- cessors will improve on us. Nor need I remind you of the earlier triumphs of McDowell, Jeaffreson of Framling- ham, and Clay. It is the gynaecological work of the Obstetrical Society with which we have at present to do. Charles Clay himself could not justly complain that we disregarded his early labours. Putting aside Graily Hewitt’s communica- tion on a special trocar for the diagnosis of ovarian cystic disease—which, by the way, was used, we are informed, in a case “ under the care of Mr. Spencer Wells,”—the first paper seriously treating of ovariotomy is by Clay, and stands as the twenty-third paper in our first volume. It is true that the main subject of Clay’s communication is not treated in a satisfactory manner by its author, who declares that in the middle of May, 1859, ten days after a patient’s delivery, he “ drew off nine pounds of a greasy chocolate-coloured fluid having a very faint urinous smell ” on passing the catheter, the patient having been long under his care for an ovarian cyst. Then Clay tells us that she continued to improve “ up to this date,” July 6tli, not two months afterwards. Our predecessors were, after all, sometimes in a hurry, as we often are now. Still Clay proceeds to relate how he had successfully performed ovariotomy two months after delivery, the patient bearing