Professor Erichsen, speaking at the University College Hospital on the
day of the opening of the schools, made a remarkable statement about surgery. He said that he thought that the limit of surgery as an art—that is, the use of the knife—had been nearly reached ; that every art could reach perfection, and this had nearly done so. "We had reached finality in manipulative surgery." He believed the stream of professional thought was now flowing in another direction,—towards the search for milder means, means more nearly those of medicine than of surgery. He illustrated this by the use of electricity in aneurism, by the treatment of deformities by the galvanic ecraseur, by the history of operations for the stone, and by the extraordinary number of deaths believed to result from amputations, but really the result of hospitalism.
Previous page
