New elements of operative surgery / by Alf. A.L.M. Velpeau, carefully revised, entirely remodelled, and augmented with a treatise on minor surgery ; illustrated by over 300 engravings, incorporated with the text, accompanied with an atlas in quarto of twenty-two plates, representing the principal operative processes, surgical instruments ; translated by P.S. Townsend. Augmented by the addition of several hundred pages of entirely new matter, comprising all the latest improvements and discoveries in surgery, in America and Europe, up to the present time. Under the supervision of, and with notes and observations by Valentine Moth.
- Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau
- Date:
- 1845-1847
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: New elements of operative surgery / by Alf. A.L.M. Velpeau, carefully revised, entirely remodelled, and augmented with a treatise on minor surgery ; illustrated by over 300 engravings, incorporated with the text, accompanied with an atlas in quarto of twenty-two plates, representing the principal operative processes, surgical instruments ; translated by P.S. Townsend. Augmented by the addition of several hundred pages of entirely new matter, comprising all the latest improvements and discoveries in surgery, in America and Europe, up to the present time. Under the supervision of, and with notes and observations by Valentine Moth. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.
![cases had reason to congratulate myself upon the success of the antiphlogistic treatment. At Philadelphia, with the exception of six weeks of intense heats during the summer, and six weeks of in- tense cold during winter, the temperature is constantly agreeable. This circumstance is sufficient to explain why the results of our practice are more satisfactory than in Europe, and in the great cities like Paris and London, and than in more remote latitudes, where the extremes of temperature are prolonged to a much greater length of time. I cannot believe, for example, that the two Csesa- rean operations in which I saved the mother and infant, would have succeeded as well at Paris as at Philadelphia. All these op- erations have been performed after the usual modes. [Professor Gibson appears to be under a misapprehension, both in respect to the character of the climate of the United States, and its influence upon curative surgical processes, and also in respect to the nature of our population at New York, as well as the non- frequency of aneurisms, and their limitation to persons from Eng- land. 1. Of the Effects of our Climate on Surgical Operations.—So far from the climate of the United States being in the least degree en- titled to the appellation of a mild, or equable, or moderate temper- ature and character, with only six weeks of extreme summer heats, and as many of intense cold in winter, it is proverbially known, all over the world, that all the northern portion of the United States for many degrees of latitude, and especially its seaboard, is char- acterized by the most extraordinary and sudden vicissitudes of heat and cold, and of every other meteorological phenomenon. It was remarked by Volney, that an American never becomes acclimated to his own country; and this is not surprising, when we consider our protracted and most inclement winter of four to six months duration, of an almost polar severity, our long, wet, cold, and un- wholesome spring of two to three months, and our violent heats often for months,, during July*August, and September, in the mid- dle portions of the day exceeding by many degrees what is ever known even in the tropics. [See my work on the Topography, Weather, and Diseases of the Bahama'Islands, 1823-4-5; also, my work on the Yellow Fever at Havana, 1830.] So far from our climate being, as Professor Gibson infers, a mild one, the range of Fahrenheit's thermometer during the year is fre- quently, on this northern part of our seaboard, from 110° to 120°; and even in the same day, in midsummer, the mercury has been known to descend rapidly over 40° in 24 hours! In this respect the climate of Europe has, on the contrary, a great superiority, as the thermometer there, as at Paris and London, seldom varies in any part of the year over 10 to 15 degrees in 24 hours, which I know from personal observations in those cities. Again, the experience of Dr. Mott, whose observations, both in this country, and in Europe, Asia, and Africa, have been directed to this subject, and have given him great advantages, is directly to the point, that it is precisely during those extreme and arid sum-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21036767_0050.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
