The principles and practice of modern surgery / by Roswell Park ... with 722 engravings and 60 full-page plates in colors and monochrome.

  • Roswell Park
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of modern surgery / by Roswell Park ... with 722 engravings and 60 full-page plates in colors and monochrome. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    PreferoMce has therefore been <fiven to those which have best served the author in liis personal ex])erieiiee. Because of the numerous interrchitions between surgery and internal mccHcine, so called, 1 have not hesitated to insert paragraphs and even whole cha])ters on subjects hitherto oniitlcd from the later works on surgery. To teach a student how to recog- nize naso})haryngcal adenoids, to appreciate the widespread harm they may cause and how to cope with tiiem, and at the same time to leave him cpiitc unfamiliar with their too frequent relation to the status lymi)haticus and its dangers, and to omit in such a work all reference to the latter, is to put knowledge and instruments into his possession without teaching him how rightly to employ them. A case of exophthalmic goitre affords another equally apt illustration, as being one in which the physician and the surgeon should heartily co-operate. The surgeon and the physician have drifted too far a()art. It is time that they met again in the ])resence of the ])athologist. Such a group, when pro|)erly constituted, forms an almost invincible triumvirate. It has been said that the resources of surgery are rarely successful when practised on the dying. Throughout these pages the attempt has been made to impress the fact that delay, in many of the borderland cases, is dangerous, and, often fatal, and that it is not just to charge to surgery the blame for such a result due to the physician's dilatoriness. It may lead to a better understanding of the teaching contained in the following jmges if it is here made clear just what is understootl by the suffix tto in medical termin- ology. The old tendency was to regard all morbid contlitions as expressions of inflam- mation in some of its protean manifestations. The attem|)t has been made in this work to distinguish as clearly as possible between in^ammatkm, as an exprcs.non of infection, and the vascular, nutritional, and other changes which may be brought about by perverted nutrition without necessary participation of ])arasites. To describe ostitis, for example, as inflammation of bone, is to revert to an obsolete definition. Let us, then, always translate the termination itis as implying an affection, not necessarily an inflammation, of the structure named in the word to which it is affixed. With this conception of the word or the term there can be no contradiction in its use under various conditions, and one does not necessarily connnit himself, by using it, to any definite view concc-rning the jxithology of the afl'cction which is thereby im])lied. With regard to one other feature there has been also a tle])arture from previous nomen- clature. The term lym])h glands or lymphatic glands has always seemetl objec- tionable, because, although they belong to the lymphatic system, they are in no sense glands, having no ducts, and no distinct secretron to be discharged through passageways. Whether in any sense they are to be regarded as fin-nishing an internal secretion is not the question here, their most obvious function being to act as filters. Throughout the work, then, the term lym})h gland has been carefully excluded and the more accurate and far preferable term lymph node has been substituted. This seems to be a suitable place to explain the substitution and the reason therefor.