Excision of the knee-joint : a description of a new apparatus for the after treatment with illustrative cases / by Patrick Heron Watson.

  • Watson, Patrick Heron, Sir, 1832-1907.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Excision of the knee-joint : a description of a new apparatus for the after treatment with illustrative cases / by Patrick Heron Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    crowned the efforts of the chief promoters of the operation; and in others, to an unfortunate want of success in its employment, which speculatively might be said as reasonably to indicate something blame-worthy in the unsuccessful operators themselves, as in the operation which they refuse to recognise. The procedure, as revived at the hands of such men as Sir William Fergusson and Mr Jones of Jersey, has stood the test of a sixteen years’ trial, during which it has been performed by the chief surgeons of every medical school, not only in this country and in its dependencies, but upon the continent of Europe, and has gained a verdict, if not upon all the issues which its adoption involves, yet upon so many of them as to render its future progress, in civil practice, no doubtful matter. Many of those who at first opposed its employment have changed sides in this controversy; some have passed away from this, as from all else, on this side of time; and those who still continue stout in their opposition to what they regard as a dangerous innovation, have probably done as much to diffuse a knowledge of the operation by attracting the attention of others who would never have concerned themselves about the matter had it not become a subject of dispute, as any ill which may have accrued to the operation from their energetic denunciatory efforts, or their abstinence from its practical employment. There are two reasons, it seems to me, which may encourage any one whose experience of the operation has been satisfactory, to do what he can to extend his own favourable opinion of it. The one is, that it is still practically excluded from military surgery ; the other, that even in civil life the substantive objections taken to the operation apply to what may be regarded as contingent and remedi¬ able evils. Mr Park, the great originator of this procedure, with character¬ istic modesty, insists in the letter in which he describes his new operation to Mr Pott, u I am conscious that the mode of operating, which I have described, is by no means perfect, but still stands in need of the finishing hand of a more able master.” Several such i hands as he desiderated have been engaged in the process of per-