A treatise on gun-shot wounds, on inflammation, erysipelas, and mortification, on injuries of nerves, and on wounds of the extremities requiring the different operations of amputation : in which the various methods of performing these operations are shown, together with their after-treatment ; and containing an account of the author's successful case of amputation at the hip-joint ... / by G.J. Guthrie.

Date:: 1827

Credit: A treatise on gun-shot wounds, on inflammation, erysipelas, and mortification, on injuries of nerves, and on wounds of the extremities requiring the different operations of amputation : in which the various methods of performing these operations are shown, together with their after-treatment ; and containing an account of the author's successful case of amputation at the hip-joint ... / by G.J. Guthrie. 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.

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ration. What is the state of things now ? What has the short space of twelve years done for this branch of surgery ? Why almost too much. The facility with which these operations can be performed, and the safety which attends them, has been shown, and all alarm has been banished from the minds of surgeons on these points. It is now to be feared, that they may become unmindful of the precepts I have laid down demonstrating their necessity, and recommend them to be performed when others less important might suffice. The practice of the Peninsular war was decisive on many other points. It overturned the appli- cation of the theory of aneurism to the treatment of wounded arteries ; and my paper on wounded arteries, published in 1811, in the New Medical and Physical Journal, demonstrated the necessity which existed for performing the operation at the wounded part of the vessel, and not at a distance. It showed, what is not yet well understood by many, that in no case (and this is without any exception) should one ligature above the wound be depended upon, but that another should be applied below it. I have proved from official documents, that the great dread entertained of secondary haemorrhage in Gun-shot Wounds was groundless, whilst the practice in all cases has been established on more certain

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