Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cancer : its nature and treatment / by John Pattison. 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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![not possessing a malignant disposition.” Yet even he admits that, “ in this region the difficulties of diagnosis are great, and the execution of operative manipulation is beset with many obstacles.” He goes on to express surprise that accoucheurs should venture to intrude into the management of such cases, all which he would claim as exclusively his own, and says that the frequency of pelvic abscesses, which are so common, may be accounted for by the liberties that accoucheurs allow themselves to take with the uterus, in defiance of decency, danger, and common sense. It is not my intention to enter upon the ridiculous question in dispute, I only allude to the subject as another proof how surgeons overlook the good of the patients in their craving after operations;>and it is to me humiliating to see such a miserable question of precedency engaging the time and the attention of the Profession. I object not to the operator, but to the operation; yet I cannot see that a surgeon, such as Mr Syme, is more competent to master the difficulties of diagnosis in uterine complaints than an accoucheur, such as Professor Simpson, who of such diseases must, (to quote an old saying,) “ have forgotten more than the other ever learnt ;” or how Professor Simpson’s decency and common sense in uterine examinations are inferior to ]\fr Syme’s. Cancer of tlie womb, as has been shown, occurs in the Frequency of proportion of one-third of all cases. Cancer of the This Statement is in accordance with the vvomD. observation of my own experience. For so serious and fatal a malady the Profession have but two modes of treatment—by the knife, and by the destructive agency of powerful caustics. The late ]M. Lisfranc, of Paris, boasted that he had performed the operation of amputating the neck of the womb in above](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22396263_0027.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
