The Murphy button : with a report of an unsuccessful cholecystduodenostomy / by Aug. Schachner.

  • August Schachner
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Murphy button : with a report of an unsuccessful cholecystduodenostomy / by Aug. Schachner. 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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    lines in the length of the cylinder will make a considerable difference in the ease with which the operation can be performed, and I am confident that some of the feeling against the device has had its origin in some of the defective buttons. These objections have been reviewed not with the intention of waging a war against the button, nor does the raising of objec- tions against a new departure necessarily indicate a weakening of the same. But since they have been made, it becomes our duty to consider them impartially and to act cautiously. If the Murphy button is capable, under certain conditions, of creat- ing harm, we are anxious to know just what the conditions are and their chances of occurrence, and then the rest will be plain sailing. The fact that a certain accident has oc- curred once forever settles any doubt that may have existed as to the possibility of its occurrence, and forever places it within, not only the possible, but also the prob- able, range of reoccurrence, and the ques- tion then resolves itself into: What are the chances for this accident to occur? In the single clinical case, a report of which is appended, in which T have used the but- ton, I was satisfied that the operation is not always the simple procedure that many would have us believe, and I am convinced that much harm has been done the device by floating the impression that any novice, and even the busv practitioner, as one enter- prising manufacturing firm would have us believe, could safelv use the button. The truth is just as Dr. Murphy expressed
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