Lectures on the nature and treatment of deformities, delivered at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Bloomsbury Square / By R.W. Tamplin.

  • Tamplin, R. W. (Richard William), 1814-1874.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the nature and treatment of deformities, delivered at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Bloomsbury Square / By R.W. Tamplin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Charity, for the benevolent purpose of extending the same benefits to the poor, which he knew the rich could command. It is to Mr. Harris’s unceasing benevolence and unwearied exertions that we are indebted for its present existence. By the term deformity is meant any and every devia- tion from the recognised symmetrical proportions of the human frame; but the word is more definitively applied to those irregularities of form which consist in a partial deviation from the natural position of the body, unac- companied by malformation of the general original structure. I may here observe, that it is probably to a conviction on the part of the profession that club-feet are actual malformations, that we are to ascribe the un- accountable fact of this species of distortion having almost to the present day been left without rational or truly scientific attempts made to remedy it. This, however, is one of those useful lessons that teach us the necessity of perpetual study, and remind us that however great the advances already made, the field of inquiry is still open and inexhaustible ; that the healing art is not one in which we can ever rest supine, but, on the contrary, that it calls for constant activity and un- wearying perseverance. It must be continually borne in mind that science is ever progressing, and that it is the duty of every worthy member of the profession diligently to search out, and impartially to investigate, any new system which has for its object the alleviation of human suffering, notwithstanding its departure from the trodden path of established practice. True it is, that there are, and ever will be, “ Will-o’-th’-Wisps” pre- senting themselves under every form of quackery, and that it behoves us to use every effort to distinguish the true from the apparent, the essential from the ideal; yet must we never be deterred by timidity or prejudice from endeavouring to advance the science of which we have the honour to call ourselves professors. I say honour, because there is no higher pleasure, no greater distine- tion, no more exalted exercise of the human mind, than
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