Annual report of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital : 1933.

  • Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital : 1933. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stagnation and decrease in efficiency for the staff; inves¬ tigation in a hospital calls for the most careful observa¬ tion of patients, and patients profit thereby. To the lay mind investigation frequently suggests the idea that patients are being experimented on and not infre¬ quently are harmed; nothing could be further from the truth; investigation demands the keenest, most critical sort of study of patients, and to be successful, if for no other reason, it is essential that patients are in no wise harmed; since the opening of the Hospital it has been the rule that patients must understand and be entirely willing to cooperate in whatever is done, and nothing is ever done which is believed likely to injure the patient in any way. The willing cooperation of patients is an evidence of their confidence in the staff; it has always been given freely. During 1933 there has been carried on a considerable amount of investigation, as will be seen from the list of 193 3 publications appearing on a subsequent page of this report and in the list to appear next year, for often work done in one year does not appear in print until the next year. In this year there has been very much inter¬ est at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in total thyroid¬ ectomy as a means of therapy in cardiac disease, the work stimulated and carried on by Dr. Levine, who with his associates in cooperation with Dr. Cutler and his assistants of the surgical service has made important observations at the Brigham, while Dr. Blumgart, earlier a house officer with us, has been conducting studies of the same type at the Beth Israel Hospital. Myxedema long has been recognized as a condition in which the body is largely in a vegetative phase with lowered metabolism and decreased physical activity and in which symptoms of cardiac failure and particularly