A treatise on stricture of the urethra : containing an account of improved methods of treatment : with an appendix, on dilatation by fluid pressure in the treatment of urinary calculus and other diseases / by James Arnott.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on stricture of the urethra : containing an account of improved methods of treatment : with an appendix, on dilatation by fluid pressure in the treatment of urinary calculus and other diseases / by James Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    12/264
    such inventions. It will appear by these, that even should the inventor have been aware of some previous suggestion or known fact that resembled his own improvement, he converted into a valuable expedient, by the discovery, and explanation of its principle, and the extension of its application, what was before, but an useless chance suggestion, unappreciated by him who made it, or a fact from which no important inference had been drawn. Never- theless, it is true that the credit of originality has been denied to the most important im- provements on this account. Hunter's great- est practical addition to surgery—the opera- tion for aneurism, has been called the inven- tion of some French or Italian Surgeon, who without understanding the principle of the pro- ceeding, or appreciating its importance, chanced to perform a similar operation. Jenner, it has been asserted, is not the discoverer of the pre- ventive efficacy of cow-pox, or of vaccination ; and there is ground for the assertion ; yet the same fact or tradition, from which the inquiries originated that terminated in the discovery of the efficacy and vast importance of this pre- ventive, and in the contrivance of a means of propagating it to the extent required, was pre-