An inquiry into the average mortality in lithotomy cases; with a few remarks on the operation of lithotrity / By Alexander Miller.

  • Miller, Alex.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the average mortality in lithotomy cases; with a few remarks on the operation of lithotrity / By Alexander Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    decidedly failed to prove the superiority of the lithontritic method ; but lie concluded, that the facts advanced by the author of the memoir were sufficiently valuable to entitle him to the recom¬ pense awarded by the academy.”* I trust it has been made sufficiently clear to this learned body, that, judging of the documents submitted to the public, and reviewing impartially the time, place, and circumstances of their getting up, it cannot be truly said that lithotomy has been a tolerably successful operation in the hands of any surgeon, dead or living. It has been shewn to be an operation whose average fatality is at least one in seven ; but my own belief is, that even this is too high. We have just witnessed it as low as six in twelve, or as one in two. That an operation should be fatal in the ratio of six to twelve, and had such a lamentable result happened in the hands of an ignorant person, and of one unacquainted with the anatomy of the human body, it would perhaps not have excited much surprise ; but occurring in the hands of a surgeon of much experience, considerable reputation, and * See Lancet for May 21, 1831, p. 229, extract from Lane. Front;.