Abdominal surgery / by J. Greig Smith.

Smith, J. Greig, 1834-1897.

Date:: [1889]

Credit: Abdominal surgery / by J. Greig Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

193/846 page 171

$Removal of the Uterine Appendages. Nomenclature.—The want of a good name for this operation is already being felt. At first, when its object was supposed to be limited to the production of an artificial menopause, the operation was known as normal-ovariotomy. Battey, who introduced the name, was among the first to recognise its unsuitability. As a matter of principle, the operation was by no means restricted to ovaries that were normal; and, as a matter of practice, it was found that most of the ovaries re- moved were actually diseased. The term, Battey's operation, while suitable within the limits which Battey laid down for it, does not include the more extended modern proceedings. Oophorectomy had already been used by Peaslee and others as a synonym for ovariotomy before it was sought to limit it to removal of small ovaries ; and as oviducts are now, in most cases removed as well as ovaries, the term is in a double sense objectionable. In connection specially with disease of the Fallopian tubes, Tait's name became associated with removal of the uterine appendages ; and when, in harmony with certain beliefs which he holds as to the functions of the oviducts, he practised removal of the tubes as well as of the ovaries where others had been content with removal of the ovaries alone, the proceeding of Removal of the Uterine Appendages came to be known as Tait's operation. Men performed Tait's operation with Battey's motives; hence a confusion which has been ren- dered more confounded by more than one surgeon calling it the Battey-Tait operation. The German terms, spaying and castration, are objectionable on the grounds both of good taste and of exact naming. In many of the operations performed the effect of castration, as usually understood, is an undesirable accident rather than a definite aim. Salpingectomy for removal of the tubes, and salpingo-oophorectomy for removal of the appendages, are fairly exact but decidedly cumbrous. Prosthekotomy is equally applicable to caudal and to uterine appendages. A friend has suggested to me the word thely- tectomy (Qt]\vt>]<s = feminine principle); but this, perhaps, is$

Abdominal surgery / by J. Greig Smith.

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