Surgical Case-Histories from the Past Book

This collection of case reports has been grouped into four sections. The first group contains what are now often referred to as "major breakthroughs" - the first report of an operation under general anaesthesia, the first cardiac massage or the first resection of an aortic aneurysm. The second group is comprised of descriptions by surgeons in battle, often struggling with scanty facilities under poor conditions to deal with large numbers of casualties. The third group is a collecion of emergencies and disasters, and the final section is made up of a miscellany of interesting patients, pathologies and operations. Each chapter gives some biographical information about the surgeon, and some of the events leading up to the particular operation. Descriptions in some case histories make one marvel that anyone should have survived such trauma, let alone the possibility of subsequent infection. The surgeons come to life in these accounts, most of them dealing compassionately with their patients, particularly in the days before anaesthesia, when the best that they could do was to encourage the patient to be resolute, and to work as swiftly as possible. In contrast, Dupuytren, who rose from poverty to be a leading surgeon in France and a millionaire, cared little for the suffering poor under his care. He was called by his contemporaries, "the first of surgeons and the least of men". One of the relatively recent case histories concerns a man struck in the chest with a bullet from a machine gun in 1917. The bullet lodged near the tip of the left ventricle and an operation about a month after the original wound failed to remove it. The patient nevertheless survived and lived a normal life. When seen by Grey Turner in April 1940, he reported that he was well though a little tired. Grey Turner comments that in some cases nature should be assisted to exhibit her powers as a healer. Certainly, in many of the cases described in the book, nature has exhibited these powers, but has been ably assisted by the remarkable skill of innovative surgeons whose work, sometimes in extraordinarily difficult situations, has contributed so much to advances in the teaching and practice of surgery.Read More