Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... lectures on surgery.1 by davib W. chertbb, M.D., Professor of Surgery in Harvard University. L general considerations. We are going to speak of some of the general considerations in surgery, not by any means that this is your first instruction in that branch, but because as the beginning of a systematic course it seems proper to review the general subject. One might say that by the brilliancy of modern surgery, by its triumphs and by its boldness there was danger of being led away from the first and soundest principles of conservatism, which should make one prefer to avoid an operation rather than to do it, if that were equally beneficial to the patient. Now there is a great charm about surgery, because it is visible and tangible and demonstrable, and also because we know at once when we have done right and when we have done wrong, --a thing that we do not always know in medicine. The difficulties of diagnosis in medical practice and the doubts about the effect of drugs, make the practice of medicine full of uncertainties. Surgery is to some degree uncertain but not nearly as much as medicine. We know at once when we have done wrong, for instance, when we have attacked a tumor which had better have been left alone or mistaken a fracture for a dislocation; we are conscious at once of the wrong we have done, and 1 These are unwritten lectures printed from the stenographer's reports. Verbal corrections are made in revision, but no rhetorical changes. They were delivered to the third and fourth classeB as part of the regular course. perhaps can correct it the next time. Our mistakes in medicine are more apt to be concealed, and we cannot learn as much from them, in consequence. I think there is no doubt that medicine requires a higher grade..