Remarks on amputation : an essay, submitted to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, when candidate for admission into that body / by Alexander King.

Date:
1842
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on amputation : an essay, submitted to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, when candidate for admission into that body / by Alexander King. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    many obvious inconveniences; and if the Surgeon should consider it his duty to keep up a discharge, it might be easily managed by using thick ligatures, allowing hoth ends to remain, and applying irritating ointment to their projecting ends. Any ordinary discharge may be obtained by this means. The most scientifically performed operation, and the most judicious and careful management of the case afterwards, cannot ensure a suc- cessful result after an amputation. The size, temperature, and ventilation of the apartment in which the treatment is conducted, influences the progress and final termination most materially. Con- sidering the vast importance of this subject and its practical utility, it appears unaccountable that so little reference is made to it in the writings of practitioners in civil life. With the exception of Mr Alanson, whose Practical Remarks were published in 1782, I am not aware of any author who does more than allude to it. Military Surgeons seem to have been fully alive to its importance,—to have availed themselves of the advantages to be derived from attention to its details in practice, to the utmost extent, and in every work which they have bequeathed to posterity, it occupies a prominent place. The brilliant success which has attended the amputating knives of our Surgeons on the field, when compared with the results in civil life, [See Appendix,] is in no small degree, I think, attributable to the studious manner in which they guarded against the evils arising from atmospheric vitiation. While our attention has been principally directed to the various methods of performing the respective amputa- tions, I fear we have been neglecting a subject of much greater importance to our patients. My remarks on this branch of my subject may appear too diffuse for a paper of this description; but I must plead as my excuse the importance of the questions discussed, and the diversity of opinion which prevails among the profession regarding them. I have heard valuable suggestions for improving the salubrity of the hospital of this City, proposed by one well competent for the task, treated with ridicule, and the existence of the causes, which were considered to call for the changes, scouted as a fiction ; I therefore consider it highly- necessary to fortify, as far as possible, every statement advanced, by proof, or by the opinions of individuate the better half of whose lives has been devoted to the management and improvement of hospitals.