A surgical study : gastrotomy and gastrostomy / by J.H. Pooley.

  • Pooley, J. H. (James Henry), 1839-1897.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A surgical study : gastrotomy and gastrostomy / by J.H. Pooley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    may justly infer from their rarity that most of my readers have none, we must look for the grounds of our reasoning and conclusions to the recorded literature of the subject. In all departments, and on every subject of medical science, it is the accumulated experience of others, which, fortunately, is the property of all rather than individual experience, which is limited to its possessor, that goes to make the med- ical man thoroughly furnished for every gootl work. And it is the possession of both, a carefully accumulated i^ersonal experience, as well as a wide acquaintance with professional literature, rather than a blind reliance upon the first, that makes the superiority of the scientifically practical man over the practical man, commonly and imjiroperly so called. Nor can we .say that the consideration of this subject is un- important to any of us; for, however rare the occasion de- manding either of the.se operations may be, they are as likely to occur to us as to any body else, and when they do arise we ought to be ready to act and julvise intelligently on the subject. Disclaiming, therefore, any attemj)t at originality in this paper, I have endeavored to bring together, in more or less iletail, according to circumstances, all the cases on record, and give my own reflections and conclusions thereupon with the greatest brevity. GASTHOTOMY. And first, of ga.strotomy, or opening the stomach for the n'lnoval of foreign b(.Mlies, Hip])ocrates .*<ays, in his Eighteenth Aphorism (Adams’ edition, Vol. II., j)age 755): “A severe wound of the brain, of the heart, of the diaphragm, of the small intestines, of the stomarh, and of the liver, is deadly.” But as far as the stomach is concerned, this aphorism of the “Father of Medicine” is not universally and literally true; and as the fact that wounds of the stomach are not neces.sarily fatal is e.ssential to the very consideration of a