Modern abdominal surgery : the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, December 18th, 1890 : with an appendix on the castration of women / by Sir T. Spencer Wells.

  • Wells, Spencer, 1818-1897.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern abdominal surgery : the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, December 18th, 1890 : with an appendix on the castration of women / by Sir T. Spencer Wells. 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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    G work of an English provincial surgeon, Mr. Greig Smith, surgeon if] to the Bristol Infirmary. In the second edition, published in 1888, we find forty-six pages on the diagnosis of abdominal tumours, forty on abdominal operations generally and their after-treatment, sixty on ovariotomy, ten on the Fallopian tubes and broad ligaments, thirty on operations on the non-gravid, and sixty on the gravid uterus ; 140 on operations on the stomach and intestines, fifty on the kidneys, forty on the liver and gall-bladder, and twelve on the spleen and pancreas. Then we have a few pages on omental and mesenteric tumours and intra-peritoneal cysts. A long chapter on suprapubic cystotomy follows, and then some sixty pages are devoted to wounds and injuries of the hollow and solid viscera, perforating ulcers, purulent collections, and tubercular peritonitis. It is difficult to imagine a more striking contrast than this of abdominal surgery as it was forty years ago and is now, or to contemplate without surprise the vast and rapid advance made in our own day and generation, first in this country and afterwards abroad. In systematic works for students, and books of reference for practitioners, the sections on abdominal surgery are much en- larged. You, Mr. President, were one of the earliest of the leaders in this advance. The successive editions of your own ‘ Practice of Surgery,’ like those of Erichsen’s ‘ Science and Art of Surgery,’ confirm all that I have said, and a comparison of ‘ Heath’s Dictionary ’ with that of Samuel Cooper would do so quite as strongly. We have the well-known works of Treves on £ Intestinal Obstruction ’ and Morris on the £- Surgery of the Kidneys; ’ and I am glad to be able to say that the subject has not been neglected in this theatre. Mr. Treves’s Hunterian Lectures in 1885, on the Anatomy of the Intestinal Canal and Peritoneum in Man, mark a distinct advance in our knowledge, * and improvements in our practice. In 1878, as Hunterian Professor, I delivered six lectures in this . College on the ‘ Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment of Abdominal . Tumours.’ Two of those lectures were devoted to the Diagnosis, and four to the Surgical Treatment of such tumours. Three were restricted to the treatment of Ovarian Cysts and Tumours, especially to Ovariotomy, and to the consideration of Antiseptics in Abdominal Surgery. The Surgical Treatment of Uterine Tumours was the subject of the concluding lecture. It was