The shoulder : rupture of the supraspinatus tendon and other lesions in or about the subacromial bursa / E.A. Codman.

Ernest Amory Codman

Date:: 1934

Credit: The shoulder : rupture of the supraspinatus tendon and other lesions in or about the subacromial bursa / E.A. Codman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$2(> Of our colleagues to stu.lv a series of eases for us and for the College n l.ough only for a year or two, would require a certain magnV ' ic surgeons have done this. The staff of the M G HI™ now done tins for many years, as I have explained in the prefat can flunk of no other valid objections, except the question of an' noted power sufficient to overcome the existing inert a in order 'to give momentum to this plan. t,lp ] °U!T\ ;ipfrove °f ™y suggestions. You may not even take )e tumble to test the statements made, after our usual professional manner, in the central portion of the book, in which there is scarcely a chapter without one or more original observations which need con- tn mat,on by other students, before they should go to the practitioner c sooner or later, according to our usual customs, you will try by haphazard human experiments the operations which 1 recommend. You will do these experiments individually, without careful record or Public y of «« failures, merely to satisfy yourselves that you each can make the diagnosis and accomplish the technical procedure. Why not try an experiment now, with this one relatively unknown form of m.iury to see whether by an organized effort you can test my claims and then diffuse those ideas which prove to be important? Would this not be more sensible than to permit me to write a book for a publisher to broadcast as authoritative, or to allow one of our colleagues to say in a respectable medical journal, that the intravenous injection of a certain drug is 100% effective in bursitis? Your present ethics encourage us to have such advertisements. Wm. may object to my personal form of presenting this problem and tell me to try the drug which my colleague recommends so highly for my own analysis shows that my results are far less satisfactory than those which he describes, except in the milder forms of bursitis, which get well soon with no treatment but rest. Well, then, use his c anus to test, and afterward to proclaim. Perhaps the makers of he drug will contribute the expenses for the experiment. Let them have your authority, as well as that of the prominent surgeon, whom they are now at liberty to quote in their publications to the practi¬ tioner, without any infringement of our ethics. If the fact is con¬ firmed, it should have as wide a publicity as possible. Dr. Richards tells us that he made the discovery of this remarkable cure by acci¬ dental observation in a case where the drug had been given for other reasons, but promptly relieved a coincident bursitis, from which the patient was suffering. The surgeon repeated the experiment in sev¬ enty other cases with the same success; then he felt that he should$