Modern surgery and its making : a tribute to Listerism / by C.W. Saleeby.

  • Caleb Saleeby
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Modern surgery and its making : a tribute to Listerism / by C.W. Saleeby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/378 page 3
    years the proposal to write the book. The Victorian dignity and courtesy of his refusal were sufficient to remind one of what age he is indeed a glory. Two or three of my personal friends amongst contempo- rary surgeons refused on one ground or another— principally, perhaps, because they considered that, in their hands, the knife was mightier than the pen. Assuming, at that time, that only a surgeon could suitably write the needed book, I gave up, for the nonce, the search for an author. But as the years have passed, and medical and surgical questions have more and more taken on their social and national aspect, not least in relation to the urgent, ominous, scandalously neglected needs of the nation’s school children, as revealed by medical inspection, it has seemed clear, first, that this book must be written forthwith, the public ignorance of the subject being shown to be no longer a defect in culture merely, but a defect in citizenship ; and, second, that from some points of view there may be an advantage in the presentation of the case by an author who, what- ever his defects, speaks of what he knows at first- hand and has lived with day and night, but does so without any personal or professional bias, not being himself engaged in any form of medical or surgical practice. His recollection of the details of surgical technique or of surgical anatomy may very well be neither too accurate nor too precise, but these do not concern anyone but the operator as operator—who is the one person to whom these pages are not addressed, except in so far as they deal with the question of his economic status in society, with its manifold anomalies, injustices, and inefficiencies. On the other hand, it may well be that a writer who could only injure himself by over-
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