The improvements in modern surgery : being the oration delivered March 8, 1854, before the Medical Society of London, at the eighty-first aniversary / by Henry Smith.

  • Henry Smith
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The improvements in modern surgery : being the oration delivered March 8, 1854, before the Medical Society of London, at the eighty-first aniversary / by Henry Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    upwards and outwards, and thus materially prevents that state of quietude which is so necessary for the accomplishment of union after the edges of the cleft have been brought into con¬ tact by sutures ; in fact, these powerful muscles on either side continually drag upon the moveable palate. The determination of this fact, caused at once the solution of the difficulty by which Graafe, Roux, Dieffenbach, and Liston were arrested, for it was seen, that in order to insure success, the muscular fibres which acted upon the palate must be divided prior to the at¬ tempted union of the edges of the cleft. The operation has been adopted upon this principle on many occasions, and by several surgeons with the very best effects, numerous instances have been under my own observation, and in by far the majo¬ rity of cases, an admirable cure has been the result. I think it would be difficult to point to an operation in surgery which may be more truly called scientific, for the deductions which Mr. Fergusson had arrived at, were the result of investigation and reasoning, founded upon the most accurate physiological and anatomical data. I cannot leave this subject, without referring to the improved means which a Fellow of this Society has adopted of remedying these sad accidents from which some females labour under. I allude to the ruptured pernineum and prolapse of the vagina. Mr. Isaac Baker Brown has practised a most ingenious mode of treatment for the latter affections, consisting in a series of operative proceedings, by which the circumference of the vagina is contracted, and the posterior portions of the labia are united, so that the relaxed parts may have a better support. In in¬ stances of ruptured perineum, Mr. Brown has been very suc¬ cessful, by practising the method previously adopted of dividing the sphincter ani before uniting the parts. By his investigation into these deformities and his successful practice, Mr. Brown has done good service to surgery. In the entire category of surgical diseases, it would be diffi¬ cult to point to one to which more interest and importance has been attached by surgeons, than obtains in the instance of aneurism. A malady, whose pathology and right treatment w7ere little understood until the illustrious John Flunter ap¬ plied his powerful mind to its investigation. He both pointed out the reason why the treatment ordinarily employed in his day proved so abortive, and at the same time taught the profes-
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