On excision of the knee-joint / by R.J. Mackenzie.

  • Mackenzie, Richard James, 1821-1854.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On excision of the knee-joint / by R.J. Mackenzie. 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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    ON EXCISION OF THE KNEE-JOINT. BY E.. J. MACKENZIE, F.E.C.S.Ed., etc. [reprinted from the monthly journal of medical science for JUNE 1853.] Hitherto an impression most unfavourable to the performance of the operation of excision of the knee-joint appears to have been en- tertained generally by the profession; and severe censures have been passed on those who have, within the last three years, revived the operation, as well by those who practically are quite ignorant on the subject, as by those whose experience and professional stand- ing entitles their opinion to attentive consideration. My own experience on the subject has as yet been too limited to warrant my speaking with any degree of confidence as to the result of the operation. I have performed the operation in two cases, but although the results of these cases hitherto have fully realised my expectations, yet the number is too small, and the time which has elapsed since the operation was performed is too short, to allow much weight to be attached to my personal knowledge of the opera- tion. I have been induced, however, to write the following short notice of the subject by the conviction, from what I have lately seen of the results of the operation in several cases where it has been less recently perfonned, that the operation is one which has been rejected from surgical practice on insufficient grounds, and that it will yet come to supersede, in many cases, the severe operation of amputa- tion of the thigh. In order to enable us to arrive at a rather more definite conclu- sion than hitherto, as to. the propriety of the operation, I propose to give a short account of the-few cases in which, as far as I know, the operation has been performed. The operation was first brought prominently before the profession by Mr Park of Liverpool, in 1783. It had been previously performed successfully by Mr h ilkin of Northwich, but no satisfactory record