Remarks on ovariotomy : being a postscript to the author's work on tumours / by George Macilwain.

  • Macilwain, George, 1797-1882.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on ovariotomy : being a postscript to the author's work on tumours / by George Macilwain. 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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    become the seats of morbid deposits, yet for one case in which the organ becomes the site, probably many hundreds take place in the membrane covering it. And this is equally true of the brain, lungs, heart, liver, alimentary canal, and, as dissection has j)i’Oved, the testes also. That as we pursue the enquiry, it leads us, not only to per- ceive the conservative influence of this laAV, but also to the very important fact that (local injury apart) the site of the deposition and the site of the cause, are seldom if ever the same. This gives an interesting significance to a remark made by Hunter in regard to sympathy; viz. that in some cases the sympathizer is more marked than the organ with which it sympathizes; and to a further step made by Abernethy, who remarks, that sometimes an organ might be greatly disordered without evincing it by any symptom. Neither of these illustrious men, however, went further towards the law to which I have referred ; which is curious ; since what Hunter says in relation to bullets and other foreign bodies, as well as his remarks on abscesses, are illustrations of it. I must, however, refer the reader who wishes to consider this further, to my observations in “ Medicine and Surgery one Inductive Science;” a work which, I regret, the time, expense, and the little encouragement given to scientific medicine, still oblige me to leave unfinished. In speaking of the practice in regard to those deposi- tions to which the term Tumour is especially applied, I have stated that they can alone result from errors in the nutritive forces of the body, in the extended sense of the term; and that the absorption of them can only be achieved by the correction of such errors. That removing a tumour by operation “because it is growing large” (the reason usually alleged) is, with exceptions presently to be stated, simifiy absm-d; because the very fact of its increase shows that you have not removed the cause on which its growth depends. The exceptions are, where the tumour is already approximating itself to important parts, with which any closer connection would increase the danger of removing