George W. Guthrie / [Charles Harrison Frazier].

  • Charles Harrison Frazier
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: George W. Guthrie / [Charles Harrison Frazier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS ideals of medical practice and scientific pursuits. Holding high office in city, county, and national societies, he served on committees and commissions too numerous to mention. He played an important part as a member of the House of Delegates during the years that the American Medical Association was in process of becoming the effective organization it now is; finally declining re¬ appointment in 1913 to become a member of its Judicial Council. All the while he was giving of his time to his large and exacting practice, to his community obligations, and to the demands of the medical organizations with which he was allied. He was essentially a student of medicine, and was well informed in current literature to which he was no mean contributor. In reviewing his writings one can see that not only was he abreast of the times but foresaw with a clear vision the tendencies of progressive thought. His writings were examples of good diction and there was a charm in his style, especially in his general addresses to physicians and nurses which were replete with wholesome advice. His By-Paths of the Doctor's Life, a charming paper written in 1904, might today be read with profit and to the betterment of many a physician’s life. In 1880, at a time when Lister- ism was engaging the attention of surgeons throughout this country and Europe, he presented his “Essay on Antiseptic Surgery” to the Luzerne County Medical Society. It was a carefully prepared, instructive paper with expressions of opin¬ ions from the leading surgeons of the country. At this time some surgeons still doubted the “germ theory of disease,” others questioned the efficacy of anti¬ septic treatment, placing greatest reliance upon absolute cleanliness. Guthrie preached to his fellow practitioners that, in operations of unusual gravity as in opening the peritoneal cavity and the joints, the surgeon who does not follow the exact Listerian method does not give his patient the benefit of the best resources of his profession. As long ago as 1899, many years before the employment of the trained anaesthetist, he recognized as unconscionable the habit of surgeons en¬ trusting the administration of anaesthetics to junior members of the staff. “The custom of placing the anaesthetic in the hands of the youngest man in the operat¬ ing room—often the merest tyro—is most irrational”; and “Next to the man who holds the knife is that of the one who holds the inhaler.” How prophetic these commentaries! At that period he decried the practice of tinkering oper¬ ations on women with neurasthentic disposition, such a sequence as nephror- rhaphy, Alexander’s operation, hysteropexy, double oophorectomy in one and the same patient. He lived and practised at an interesting period in the evolution of surgery, he saw the passing of the nineteenth century and the first fifteen years of the twentieth. As the sun of the nineteenth century had almost set he wrote: “How the pulse thrills when we consider what belongs to the last hundred years. The dreams of ancient and mediaeval poesy have been more than realized! Char¬ iots and horses of fire! We have harnessed the lightning and hitched it to tens
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