Clinical surgery : being the substance of an address delivered in the University of Glasgow, 4th Novemeber, 1874, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Chair / George Buchanan.

  • Buchanan, George, 1827-1905.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical surgery : being the substance of an address delivered in the University of Glasgow, 4th Novemeber, 1874, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Chair / George Buchanan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    nent physicians of the Society, the late Dr. A. D. Anderson, and my colleague, Dr. Gairdner. I have now operated more than forty times, and 'saved over one-third of the patients; and when it is remembered that in every case medical treatment had proved of no avail, and death from suffocation was imminent, it must be conceded the results have been most gratifying. The last experience I have had is, I think, most convincing. About six weeks ago I received a telegram calling me to Helensburgh, which I reached about two hours after. I found Dr. Gibb in attendance upon a little boy, five years of age, in the suffocative stage of croup. There is no doubt he could not have lived many hours. I at once performed tracheotomy, and he is now quite well. Two or three days after I got a similar call to see his sister, who had taken croup the day following my former visit. The telegram arrived too late for me to leave town that day, and in the morning I got another tele- gram to inform me that the child had died during the night. _ The history of Ovariotomy is one of the most interesting topics of modern surgery. During the first half of this century isolated attempts' were made by various surgeons to remove Ovarian cysts some of them with success; but with such a pre- ponderance of mortality, that many of the most distinguished surgeons maintained that it was utterly indefensible, and could not be « encouraged and con- tinued without danger to the character of the profes- sion Between 1840 and 1850 several fortunate results were obtained by Dr. Clay of Manchester and others; and m 1858 Mr Spencer Wells began that series of improvements in attention to details ot operating and after treatment, which gave rise to his unprecedented success, and established the opera- tion on a permanent footing. Before I was appointed surgeon to the Infirmary^, Lyon had Se two