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

Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    9/32 (page 9)
    Myiiors in Birmingham, Hey in Leeds, Grooch in Norfolk, Cheselden and Pott in the metropolis, were unostentatiously doing their good and lasting work, while William Hunter laid the foundation of the experimental school, of which he and his brother John, Hewson and Cruikshank were the chief corner stones. This is not the time to endeavour to do justice to the relative merits of these masters, some of whom have been undeservedly obscured in general estimation by the overpowering merits of John Hunter. But I cannot pass Mr. Hewson’s name without a brief reference. The principle of his working life was embodied in his favourite Baconian motto—“ Vere scire, est per causas scire” Dying in 1774, at 36 years of age, from the effects of a dissection wound, William Hewson’s chief labours were his experimental enquiries into the properties of the blood and the lymphatic system, and surgery is indebted to him for projecting the operation of paracenthesis thoracis for pneumothorax. This he did on the basis of experiments on living dogs and rabbits.* But the epoch maker was John Hunter. He perceived, grasped, and to a great extent worked out, on the basis of clinical observation and experiments on living animals, the idea of comparative pathology, based on the scheme of uni- formity of construction and action of organised beings. I shall not stop to enquire if Hunter’s operation for Aneurism was the direct result of any one experiment. His whole life’s study was experimental, as every chapter in his waitings, and hundreds of specimens in his museum incon- trovertibly testify. His own work, vast and precise though *The operation of paracenthesis thoracis for air in the chest; with some remarks on the emphysema, and on wounds of the lungs in general, by Mr. William Hewson, reader of Anatomy. Communicated by Dr. Hunter, reced. June 15th, 1767. See Medical Obserya- tions and Enquiries by a Society of Physicians in London ; 2nd edition, London, 1769, vol, III., p, 372, et seq.