The principles and practice of operative surgery.

  • Frederic Carpenter Skey
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of operative surgery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    13/792
    How far I have succeeded in accomplishing the task I have undertaken, and in fixing on its proper basis this really important branch of medical knowledge, in warning the surgeon from paths of danger and of difficulty, and of testing the question of every operation, in foro conscientice, before it is undertaken, I leave to the decision of others. I am old enough in my profession to have witnessed in past times much of wrong; I hope to live long enough to see this wrong converted into right. I have endeavoured, as an English metropolitan surgeon, to carry into execution at least one primary object, viz., to strip the science of Operative Surgery of a false glare, mistaken by the ignorant for the lustre of real excellence, to check a spirit of reckless experiment, and to repress rather than encourage tlie resort to the knife as a remedial agent. I do not pretend to have executed my task perfectly, or even to have reached the level of my own view of the necessities of the case. It may be charged against me that I have expressed freely, and perhaps more authoritatively than I am entitled, my own individual opinions, and have made little reference to those of others. In answer to this charge, I have only to remark, that I do not profess to give the multitudinous opinions of other men, and yet I have not withheld them. I have quoted the opinions entertained by most of the eminent members of the surgical profession, so far as a general intercourse and an extensive acquaint- ance have enabled me to command it. It has been the habit of my mind to lend but a hesitating obedience to the influence of authority unsupported by reason. A tolerably extensive intercourse with disease, has led to the opinions which I have embodied in the following work: I profess no more.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3