Clinical contributions to brain surgery / by John B. Roberts.

  • Roberts, John B. (John Bingham), 1852-1924.
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical contributions to brain surgery / by John B. Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from the Transactions of the Philadelphia Count}' Medical Society.] CLINICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRAIN SURGERY. By JOHN B. ROBERTS, M.D., PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY IN THE PHILADELPHIA POLYCLINIC; PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE WOMAN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA. [Read November 25, 1891.] In 18851 I took strong ground in favor of more active surgical in- terference in injuries and diseases of the cranium and brain. At that time the views advocated by me were looked upon as being too I’adical, and were quite vigorously opposed by many prominent surgeons of this country. Since that date there has been developed an unpre- cedented activity in the operative treatment of cranial and intracranial lesions, which, even in my opinion, has been too extreme. It is, per- haps, not difficult to understand this unscientific and unreasonable adoption of what might be called a surgical fashion. It is to be re- gretted that the enthusiasm created by success impels some men to interfere surgically in nearly all cases that come into their hands, withont a judicious study of each particular patient. That unre- strained mania for operating which has made abdominal surgery almost a byword has, it seems to me, entered into the domain of cerebral surgery. It is just as much a part of scientific surgery to abstain from operating unnecessarily, as it is to combat vigorously the un- reasonable conservatism of those who will not see the force of ana- tomical, surgical, and statistical evidence. Fortunately for the patients a healthy reaction is at last taking place, and surgeons are not now removing brain centres and tunnelling the brain in search of abscesses and tumors in quite as enthusiastic a manner as they were a couple of years ago. That such lesions should be promptly attacked surgically is unquestioned, but this should be done only after a thorough survey of the conditions and a judicial estimate of the gain that will possibly 1 “The Field and Limitation of the Operative Surgery of the Human Brain,’’ Annals of Surgery, July and August, 1885.