Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868.

  • Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    125/406 (page 113)
    ARTICLE X. Report on Eclectic Surgery. Presented to the Society June 12, 1807. Notwithstanding the attention of the profession may have heretofore been mostly occupied by the numerous, brilliant and remarkable changes in the practice of medicine, initiated and car- ried on by the Eclectic movement; we desire now to urge for- wards to notice the claims of Eclectic Surgery. The aim of surgeons of this school has been to work a thorough and complete reform in that branch of medical science, not only in the saving of life but also of limb. This was accomplished by working on the general principles, by which, in practice, such great success has been gained by the use of superior medicinal agents that are harmonious in their action with Nature’s operations, and by considering the true pathological conditions. Thus grand results have been obtained in the cure of obstinate surgical dis- eases that notoriously baffle the skill of those who cling to the old theories, and the equally insufficient practice of the past, in those cases. By our superior means of treating traumatic and other inflammations, we are able, in very many cases, to save a part that would otherwise have been sacrificed unsparingly to the knife, and by the same powerful means we are able to prevent fatal results after operations, which would inevitably follow such operations under the old practice. The ravages of gangrene are arrested, and that formidable condition we can completely restrain, thus taking away one prolific cause of ill-success in many surgical operations. The same remarks will apply to erysipelas, which in our hands is readily controlled. The worst forms of irritable, indolent, varicose and malignant ulcers are made to heal, under proper sanative measures, such as local applications, fomentations and proper attention to constitu- tional conditions. Cancer, too, which is so often, in the early stages, neglected by the surgeon, under the plea that nothing can be done for it, or that it will return, is radically cured, saving often to the community many years of valuable lives. To us it seems like culpable, we might almost say criminal neglect, to thus leave a germ of disease alone, to run its course to certain destruction of the body, when it is so constantly demonstrated that it is origi- [Assem. No. 25.] 8