The London Surgical Home, or, modern surgical psychology : being a popular statement of the operations therein performed by Mr. Isaac Baker Brown / by John Scoffern.

  • John Scoffern
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The London Surgical Home, or, modern surgical psychology : being a popular statement of the operations therein performed by Mr. Isaac Baker Brown / by John Scoffern. 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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    were held so much in check. Perfect in all respects was ^liss save one. She had a disordered rage for waltzing. Once on her feet to three-four time, once her slim waist encircled by a male arm, and she would waltz up to half an inch of death’s door. The fabled cork leg which ran a Dutch merchant to death, and then danced away with his skelot^n, was ha.rdly more mobile than IMiss under the circumstances indicated. Not only did she induce heart disease in herself, but she sent to Kensal Green more than a dozen promising young men who had stood in the relation of waltzing partners. She had become a pest—this otherwise charming girl. Eemonstrances and per- suasion were tried and thrown away. As well might her well- wishers have whistled to the winds as tried to stop her fatal gyromania. In this emergency the Bishop of was con- sulted, with the intent of bringing his moral suasion to bear. The right reverend dmne w’as wise in his generation. Not relying overmuch on his moral power, he invoked the aid of surgeiy. It seems that the Bishop of had perused in the Morning Herald newspaper a letter written by one Dr. Kidd, specifying that the waltzing mania, like certain other manias, might be cured by a mild peripheral operation. The Bishop of thereupon placed himself in communication with Dr. Kidd, and Dr. Kidd recommended the London Surgical Home. To that beneficent institution Miss went, and having undergone a slight peripheral operation came out cured. She is now, I learn, as complete an ornament to her sex as any charming woman can weU be. The case having struck me as very remarkable, I made it my business to inquire of one of the medical officers of the London Surgical Home relative to the exact nature of the operation. “ The simplest thing imaginable,” he said; “ division of a few fibres of the glutpci and gastrocnemii muscles, no more.” For
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