Volume 1

A system of surgery / by J. M. Chelius; translated from the German and accompanied with additional notes and observations by John F. South.

  • Maximilian Joseph von Chelius
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of surgery / by J. M. Chelius; translated from the German and accompanied with additional notes and observations by John F. South. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    191/1006
    D he was not more ignorant tlian his contemporaries. But he was certainly R an attenti\ e observer and a careful recorder of what he saw. He wrote ji specially upon anal fistula, which was translated by Read in 1588, and also a Practice of Surgery, in which, among other things, he speaks of sores on the penis, also of gonorrhoea, and describes what is to be done when a I stone gets into the urethra. From the number of manuscripts and trans- j lations it is quite evident he was long held in great repute by his coun- r trymeu, and his works are quite equal and much more original than those i of surgical writers of the early part of the sixteenth century. It is much ^ to be regretted that the several manuscripts have not hitherto been collated and published, as they present an excellent view of the state of j- Surgery in England at this period.—J. p. s.] I With Guido de Chaueiaco (who lived at Avignon) first commenced a I period of independent exertion and reference of Surgery to the basis of anatomy. [In 1542 the Surgeons, who had previously existed in London as one if I not two distinct bodies or larotherhoods, were united without any very good . reason beyond, perhaps, Henry the Eighth’s pleasure, by act of Par- liament, to the Barbers’ Company of London; but they were only paired, not I matched, as it appears that their Court of Assistants was equally divided between the two professions, the Barbers having their side, the Surgeons theirs, but neither interfering with the other’s department. This Act of Parliament encouraged dissection by directing that “ the masters ' or governors of the said mystery” should have, “at their free liberty and pleasure,” the bodies of four felons, “ to make incision of the same ‘ * * * for their further and better knowledge, instruction, insight, learn- . ing, and experience in the said science or faculty of Surgery.” From the destruction of the books it cannot be ascertained whether dissection was -forthwith pursued; but, in 1566, public demonstrations and dissections were enacted by the Company of Barbers and Surgeons to be held in their hall at stated periods, and conducted by two masters and two stewards of the “ anathomies.” There was also a readership of anatomy at the hall, which • was long held by physicians appointed by the Court of Assistants, but 'Avhen instituted is doubtful. Wadd says that Dr.William Cunningham lectured there in 1563; but the first appointment I can find is that of Dr. Paddy, who was appointed reader of the anatomy lectures on the 11th July, 1596. Tlie study of anatomy does not seem to have been so little thought of at this time as generally believed, in proof of which it may be mentioned that Sir Edward Arris, an alderman of London, who was also warden in 1642, and master of the Company of Barbers and Surgeons in 1651, founded on the 27th October, 1645, six anatomical lectures, to be pub- licly read every year between Michaelmas and Christmas, and endowed them with 300/., on condition that the Company should pay for the lectures 20/. a-year: subsequently he exchanged this sum for an annuity of 30/. charged on his estates, and at a later period redeemed this charge by paying 510/. to the Company, which Avas by them paid over at the disso- lution to the Surgeons’ Company, and, when the latter merged into the Col- lege of Surgeons, the same was handed over to them. Arris’s good exanqile was followed by Mr. John Gale, who, on the 30th June, 1698, founded one anatomy lecture every year, to be called Gale’s Anatomy, and en oAved it Avith a rent-charge of 16/. a-year out of certain landed pro-