Epoch-making books in British surgery. I, "A system of surgery" by Master John Arderne / by Sir D'Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.S.A.

  • D'Arcy Power
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Epoch-making books in British surgery. I, "A system of surgery" by Master John Arderne / by Sir D'Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.S.A. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is to illustrate the diseases from personal experience and to give details of the patients whom the author himself had treated. It is still readable, therefore, for it gives a picture not only of the practice and trials of a surgeon but also of the conditions under which a patient lived in the fourteenth century. Here is a good example of his method of writing. The case was clearly a cancer of the male breast : “ To a priest of Colstone near Bynghame [Colston Bassett in Nottinghamshire] there fell a sore in the right pap within the skin, upon the top of the pap as it were a little knot about the size of a pea with itching. And the aforesaid knot grew continuously till it was as large as the egg of a hen and looked like a top. The colour of the sore was livid, mingled with red, and it discharged a wateriness. It felt hard, and when two years were passed he was taught by a lady to lay a plaster upon it and to drink the drink of Antioch for a long time. And when he perceived that the aforesaid medicines availed him nothing he went into the town of Nottingham to be let blood, and when the barber perceived the aforesaid knot he asked of him whether he would be helped about it and told him that he knew of a cure for it and could heal him. The priest said he would fain be helped, but nevertheless he said to him he would ask counsel if it might be done to him as he said. And in the same town there was a wise surgeon [i.e., John Arderne himself] of the which the said priest had knowledge, and he went to him and asked counsel if that he were curable, or if that he might suffer any cutting or corrosive or any such other medicines. And the said leech warned him that he should on no manner put no corrosive nor any other violent medicines nor allow any cutting to be done, for if he did he promised that it would bring him to his death without any recovery ”. A Case of Traumatic Tetanus.—There was “ a gardener who, while he worked amongst the vines, cut his hand with a hook upon a Friday after the feast of [the translation of] Saint Thomas of Canterbury in summer [July 7], so that the thumb was wholly separated from the hand except at the joint where it was joined to the hand, and it could be bent backward to his arm and there streamed out much blood. “ And as touching the cure. The thumb was first reduced to its proper position and sewn on and the bleeding was stopped with Lanfrank’s red powder and with the hairs of a hare and the dressing was not removed until the third day. When it was removed there was no bleeding. Then there was put upon it those medicines which engender blood, redressing the wound once every day. The wound began to purge itself and to pour out matter. And on the fourth night after, the blood began to break out about midnight and he lost almost two pounds of it by weight. And when the bleeding was stopped the wound was re-dressed daily as before. Also on the eleventh night about the same time the bleeding broke out again in greater quantity than it did the first time. Nevertheless the blood was staunched, and by the morning the patient was so taken with the cramp in the cheeks and in the arm that he was not able to take any meat into his mouth, nor could he open his mouth, and on the fifteenth day the bleeding broke out again, and on the eighteenth day the blood broke out again beyond all measure, and always the cramp continued and he died on the twentieth day