Note 1 — SECOND PRELIMINARY LECTURE TO THE COURSE OF PATHOLOGY AND THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE; EXHIBITING A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SURGICAL OPERATION.
Reading edition
It may be surprising, but it is not inconsistent with human nature, that such men should be the persecutors of others; and it may perhaps be worth while to quote a few sentences from the production of such men directed against myself.
“While an intimate acquaintance with the Anatomy of the human body, is absolutely necessary to him who wishes to practise Surgery, with credit and success, it must be acknowledged, that those who are much occupied with dissection, are but too apt to overrate the practical importance of a minute knowledge of healthy structure. That surgeon would indeed justly hazard the imputation of rashness and presumption, who would (should is here meant) imprudently venture to apply a ligature to the carotid or subclavian arteries, or attempt to remove the stricture in a strangulated crural hernia, without an accurate knowledge of the assemblage of important vessels which are included in the regions of the neck and groin: yet we do not allow ourselves to be much influenced by the opinions of the anatomist who affirms, that there are certain fixed and invariable rules, according to which, in every case, those operations are to be performed. We have learnt to infer, that the different regions of the body include almost constantly similar organs in every individual; and we know, that these organs have usually a general relation to each other, in form, magnitude, and position. Yet very little further observation is sufficient to convince us, that these relations do not admit of being determined with mathematical precision. The form and position of parts, ascertained with the most scrupulous accuracy in one individual, are not to be adopted as the basis of a system of rules, by which the operative surgeon is invariably to be directed in the practice of his art. To inculcate on the minds of the inexperienced, that surgical operation consists merely in the study of the external form, and that it is solely regulated by the mathematical bearings of certain prominences and depressions on the surface of the body, is to encourage the rash and the ignorant to sport with the lives of their fellow creatures, and entail disgrace and misery on themselves.”
What must the liberal and candid think of this, when they are informed that the misrepresentations which I now quote, are the production of a party, of whom more than one intends to give a course of lectures on subjects similar to the man against whom they privately direct these attacks!... What they want in intellect and genius, they compensate for in numbers and in stratagem. I am aware that these gentlemen may influence some of better minds than their own; but I shall entrust their confutation and their shame to demonstration and the evidence of facts.
When I have mistaken the femoral artery for the profunda; when I have taken up arteries in amputation before sawing off the bone; and when, in attempting to perform the operation of Lithotomy, I have been forced to abandon it, publicly to attempt an explanation in apology for the blunder, and then obliged to leave it, to see whether the stone would come away of itself! or be, as is perpetually the case on similar occasions, privately extracted by another—when I have done all this, and made myself an object of laughter even to the youngest pupil—then, then I shall cease even to speak of Surgery or Medicine.