The principles of surgery / by James Miller.

  • James Miller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of surgery / by James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Our own country was at this time by no means barren in surgery. Percival Pott and John Hunter are names which occur, the one in the middle, the other in the end, of the eighteenth century, and arc fully equivalent to Petit and Desault; indeed Hunter may be justly ranked as the greatest man that ever graced the profession. Pott, the best author, operator, and practical surgeon of his time, greatly improved the practice of surgery in England, both by his writings and by per- sonal example. Like Desault, his attention was particularly directed to the treatment of fractures ; of which he had some painful experience in his own person, having sustained a severe compound fracture of the leg. He has left a justly celebrated treatise on the subject. On am- putation, his observations are most important; clearly discriminating between those cases, of injury more particularly, which demand the operation, and those which do not; at the same time, marking the period most advantageous to its performance. Regarding injuries of the head, he wrote with more precision, and at the same time with more originality, than any previous author; and will ever remain a valued authority upon that subject. The same may be said of his de- scription of vertebral disease; he having been the first who clearly dis- tinguished between those curvatures of the spine depending on mere changes of form in the bones, and those occasioned by caries or abscess. The latter formidable affection is still known as Pott's Disease of the vertebrae. He greatly improved the treatment of fistula in ano, and abscesses in general; and by simplifying the whole art of surgery, discarding the cautery and escharotic unguents, or rather limiting them to their proper place and use, employing also the cutting instruments with caution and reserve, and placing more implicit trust in, and show- ing more respect for, the powers of nature, than had hitherto been the custom—he achieved a most important and beneficial reform. Until his time, the maxim Dolor medicina doloris remained unrefuted. The actual cautery, for example, was in such general use, that at the time when surgeons visited the hospital, it was regularly heated and prepared in the wards, and in the presence of the patients, as a part of the necessary apparatus. Mr. Pott lived to see these remains of bar- barism set aside, and a more humane and rational plan, of which he was the originator, universally adopted. John Hunter, a native of Scotland, the pupil, first of Cheselden, and afterwards of Pott, though not remarkably distinguished as an operator, was the most gifted surgeon of which the medical profession can boast; fessor of Materia Medica and Botany, the latter of Clinical Medicine. At the commence- ment of the college, held in June, 1768, medical honours were conferred for the first time in America. On the 1st of August, 1769, the organization of the college was completed, according to the original design, by the election of Dr. Benjamin Rush to the chair of Chemistry (p. 105). By an Act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, passed in 1779, the charters granted to the College of Philadelphia, by the proprietors, were abrogated, its officers displaced, and its properties transferred to a new institution, which was called The University of Pennsylvania. The difficulties occasioned by this arbitrary proceeding were adjusted in 1783, and the former professors of the college were reinstated in their chairs. In the year 1791 the two schools were fused into one, which was styled The University of Pennsylvania, and in the following year the professors of the new institution were ap- pointed, Dr. Rush taking the chair of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Medi- cine.—Ed.]