The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee.

  • Sampson Gamgee
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of vivisection on human surgery / by Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the cautery for the arrest of hemorrhage. brbast he clirects,?t4rg employment of u a reel hot knife, or a sharj.) knife nmde of Naorn, or wood dipped ifi aquafortis, by whicl\mHficefhe supposes the vessels will be \^uterized as; the inciHion/advances.” Jean Louis Petit relates, that when he commenced to practice surgery, (more than a century after Fare’s death), it was deemed a matter of indifference by some surgeons to tie the nerve with the artery, while others particularly en¬ joined such combined ligature, and for this reason, “ to retain the blood it was necessary to tie the vessels, and no less so to tie the nerves in order to retain the animal spirit.”* William Bromfield, surgeon to Her Majesty’s household and to St. George’s Hospital, wrote in 1773 in praise of Mr. White’s use of the sponge to restrain the bleeding of the large blood vessels after amputation of the extremities, “ for the pain consequent to enclosing the nerve within the ligature, can only be described by those who have felt it; indeed, the bystanders, as well as the operator, if not deaf and blind, must be impressed with an idea of the patient’s suffering the most excruciating torture.” f Further on the same author relates “ two cases in which the patients died from hemorrhage after amputation of the thigh. The one had the vessels secured by the needle and ligature, with some muscular substance, &c., as usually enclosed.” Such the state of practice, according to the most reputed text book published by one of the surgeons to St. George’s Hospital, five years after John Hunter was appointed on its staff. *Traite des maladies chirurgicales et des operations qui lenr conviennent ; ouvrage posthume de J. L. Petit, mis an jour par M. Lesne Nouvelle edition corrigeel Paris 1790, tome 3, page 175. fChirurgical Observations and Cases, London, 1773, vol. 1, pp. 293 and 307.
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