Lectures on orthopedic surgery : and diseases of the joints : delivered at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, during the session of 1874-1875 / by Lewis A. Sayre.

  • Lewis Sayre
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on orthopedic surgery : and diseases of the joints : delivered at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, during the session of 1874-1875 / by Lewis A. Sayre. 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.

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    nals, never laying down any laws or rules to aid another in per- forming the same cure in similar cases. And this, gentlemen, constitutes one of the essential differences between an honorable physician and the quack. The one labors to disseminate and diffuse his knowledge for the benefit of his whole profession, in order that he may relieve as much of human suffering as is within his power; the other endeavors to conceal the little knowledge he may possess for his own particular profit or gain. The importance of the subject no one can deny, who pays the slightest attention to the numerous cases of malformation and deformity which we observe in every-day life. You can scarcely walk a block in this crowded city, or visit any of the smaller towns and villages of our wide-spread country, without seeing malformed or crippled sufferers, whose countenance bears the impress of mortified pride at their unfortunate condition, fre- quently connected with expressions of intense pain, produced by their abnormal physical position ; hence, the necessity of giving a special course of lectures on this particular department of sur- gery. The etymology of the term has been in considerable doubt; Andry, of Paris, who has been generally regarded as the founder of this branch of surgery, derived it, to use his own words, from op0o9, which signifies straight, free from deformity; and Traihiov, a child. Out of these two words I compound that of orthopcedia, to express in one term the design I propose, which is to teach the different methods of preventing and correcting the deformities of children. l Other authors, however, derive the second part of the word, some from irah, a child, and others ixom. jpes, afoot; but both of these derivations seem inadequate to express the full sense of or- thopedic surgery in the present day, limiting its extent as they do in one case to deformities of children, and in the other to those of the feet; whereas at the present time it extends not only to adults as well as children, but to deformities of all parts of the body. I would prefer, therefore, to derive the word from opdbs, straight, and iraihevw, I educate; this is more comprehensive, and embraces all deformities of the human frame, and also desig- ] See L'orthopedie, ou l'Art de prevenir et de corriger dans les Enfans les De- formites du Corps, a Paris, 1741.