The first lines of the practice of surgery: designed as an introduction for students and a concise book of reference for practitioners (Volume 2).

  • Cooper, Samuel, 1780-1848.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first lines of the practice of surgery: designed as an introduction for students and a concise book of reference for practitioners (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    With such treatment, external means are to be combined; as repeated frictions of the swelling with a dry towel, strong liniments, or, what is still better, the iodine ointment. Elec- tricity and galvanism may also prove useful auxiliaries to the other means. Accident has sometimes furnished useful suggestions in the practice of surgery: bronchoceles have occasionally festered, or ulcerated, and the result sometimes been the dispersion of most of the swelling. Hence, the plans of forming issues and setons, as a mode of cure. Valuable information, respecting the effects of setons, may be collected from a paper by Dr. Somerville, de- scribing the practice of Quadri at Naples, and inserted in the Med. Chir. Trans, vol. 10; and from another paper in the ele- venth volume, drawn up by Mr. Copeland Hutchison. It is evident, that the trial of a seton should never be made, except when iodine has decidedly failed, and the complaint is begin- ning to be oppressive by its size. If this latter measure, or the formation of an issue, should not be deemed advisable, and the patient's life be rendered misera- ble, or seriously endangered by the pressure of the swelling on the trachea, oesophagus, and veins returning the blood from the head, it will be for the practitioner to consider, whether he will imitate Walther, of Landshut, and Mr. Coates, of Salisbury, in tying one or both of the superior thyroid arteries, or follow the example set by Gooch, Desault, Theden, Vogel, and Hedenus, who ventured to extirpate the enlarged thyroid gland. The latter distinguished surgeon, residing at Dresden, has performed this bold operation, at least six times, with complete success. The most essential rule in the operation would be to secure every large artery directly it was cut, so that the patient might not be lost by hemorrhage, ere the complete detachment of the swelling was effected. Now that the right method of tying large arteries is better understood than formerly, secondary he- morrhage would not occur with the frequency exemplified in Gooch's cases. Very large bronchoceles sometimes obstruct respiration, de- glutition, and the return of the blood from the head, in so serious a degree, that a surgeon would feel greatly inclined to make any rational attempt to relieve his patient, even though it might be one of a bold description. For the relief of these cases, the foregoing operations are entitled to impartial consideration, especially as they are founded upon correct principles, and have already been accomplished in several instances with suc- cess.