Note 76 — Chapter XXIX

It was accordingly named the Apteryx, or wingless, from the Greek Alpha and Pterux.

[77] We have derived great pleasure from our correspondence, during some years, with Professor Ethelbert Dudley, of Lexington, Kentucky, and from the evidence it affords of Abernethy's principles having been recognized, and practised with great success, by one of the most distinguished surgeons and successful operators in the Western World. Professor E. Dudley, himself a distinguished surgeon and lecturer, and a man who unites with an extremely clear and vivacious perceptivity, a most untiring zeal in his profession, is the nephew of the celebrated B. Dudley, whose fame extends through the great Mississippi Valley. This gentleman, now advanced in years, was an early pupil of Abernethy, of whom he is a great admirer. He is a remarkably successful operator, and, during his more active period, was sometimes sent for several hundred miles. He is said to have performed lithotomy 200 times, with the loss of only six cases. His unusual success in operations he attributes not so much to any peculiar dexterity as to the manner in which he conducts the preparatory and subsequent portions of the Constitutional treatment of his cases. He seems also to have practised some other of Abernethy's habits: the most careful consideration of the pecuniary circumstances of his patients, interspersed with not a few examples of almost unexampled generosity.

[78] See Lancet, 1828.