Thomas Keith and ovariotomy / by J. Marion Sims.

  • J. Marion Sims
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thomas Keith and ovariotomy / by J. Marion Sims. 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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    the antiseptic method, Keith lias cured of his last hundred cases ninety-seven per cent; seventy-three of these in succession without a single death. If Keith cured from eiglity-six to ninety per cent before antisepsis, while others were curing seventy or even eighty; and if he now cures ninety-seven per cent with it, while others cannot get over eighty-eight or ninety with it, then I thought there must be something besides antisepsis to account for this difference. With this feeling I went to Edinburgh, and I think I have learned the secret of his great success—a secret that he is hardly aware of himself, because he has rarely seen the operation performed by any one else. Keith is systematic in everything he does. He uses a Lis- ter’s spray apparatus with three jets, which works six hours if necessary, and is placed to the left of the patient’s head, at a distance of eight or nine feet from the seat of operation. Most other surgeons place it at the feet and to the left. -By Keith’s plan the spray interferes less with the assistants, and is not expended on their arms and elbows. After operations, his sponges are thoroughly washed and then soaked for ten or twelve hours in a solution of washing soda, which cleanses them of blood and fibrine. Previously to operation, they are soaked in carbolized water (one to twenty). Just before oper- ation they are wrung out of a hot carbolized solution, and put in a tightly covered tin-pail, and placed near the fire to be kept warm till they are used. His operating table is twenty-two inches wide and thirty-three inches high. In his early opera- tions he used chloroform as an anesthetic. But in later years, he has used ether, and thinks it safer than chloroform, and that recoveries under ether would always be greater than under chloroform, other things being equal. He thinks the depress- ing effects of chloroform contributed directly to the death of some of his early cases. He carries out Listerism very care- fully with hands, instruments, and sponges, all well carbolized. He operates usually about 11 o’clock in the day, and the patient is allowed only a little tea and toast at eight in the morning. Ordinarily, he does not put his patients under any long pre- paratory treatment for the operation. I saw him perform two ovariotomies, and each case came to his infirmary on the day preceding operation.