Recent surgical progress : a result chiefly of experimental research / by W.W. Keen.

  • William Williams Keen
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Recent surgical progress : a result chiefly of experimental research / by W.W. Keen. 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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    may say also amusing. Having a patient requiring a new nose, and having amputated a leg for some disease which did not involve the thigh bone, he took a bit of the lower end of this thigh bone, whittled it into the shape of a nose, and bored out two nostrils in it. He then made an incision in the skin of the forearm of the patient, loosened the skin to some extent from the underlying muscles, placed the new bony nose under the skin, and closed the wound. After three months, when the skin of the forearm had become firmly attached to •/ the bony nose, which was only a temporary tenant of his forearm, the skin and the new bony nose were cut out in one piece and transplanted to the face. This gave the patient a good, firm, bony nose, which at the same time was covered with the healthy skin of the forearm, and avoided any disfiguring scar .on the fore- head. Even more surprising things have been done by Carrel and Guthrie in the transplantation of soft parts which had been preserved by various means, and yet grew fast and fulfilled their function. For example, in November, 1906, Carrel removed from the neck of a dog a portion of the carotid artery, and put it into cold storage, where it was kept at an even temperature of 32° to 33° F. After twenty days in cold storage he transplanted this into the aorta of a cat, and after two years and one month the cat was perfectly well. Again, in May, 1907, a portion of a dog’s aorta was removed, and a similar portion of the artery behind the knee removed from the amputated leg of a man was put in its place, and eighteen months later the dog was still in thoroughly good con- dition. Guthrie also reports] that he removed from a dog a portion of the great vein alongside the aorta (the vena