On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew.

Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    be watched with scrupulous accuracy. Nothing can give greater satisfaction to the humane surgeon and philoso- pher than the contemplation of the change of practice resulting from modern researches in the healing art: ad- vantage has been taken of the errors of our ancestors, and their blunders even turned to present good. To dwell upon the subject any longer is unnecessary, as the powers of nature in the restoration of parts is fully established and well understood; and to such an extent does this exist that we know that parts entirely separated from the body have been reapplied and united.* There are not wanting * Garengeot, a celebrated French surgeon, asserts that he had seen a nose which had been bitten off in a quarrel, thrown upon the ground, allowed to get cool, taken up, fixed to the face, and adhere again; and he records (Traite des Operations de Chirurgie, vol. iii) that M. Galin, produced a similar union of a considerable portion of the nose after it had been bitten off and spit out into a dirty gutter. It was well washed, and, upon the return of the soldier, who, having suffered this mutilation, had pursued his adversary, re-applied to his face. Garengeot ixamined the man on the fourth day, and found the wound completely cicatrized.— Blegny (Zodiacus Medico-Gallicus, Mar. 1680) records a similar case of union after a sabre cut; and Mr. Carpue, in his excellent ‘Account of Two Successful Operations for restoring a Lost Nose,’ makes reference to Lombard, Loubet, and others, who have been successful in like cases.— Sir Leonard Fioravanti, a Bolognese, states, in his ‘ Rational Secrets and Chirurgery Reviewed,’ that, when in Africa, he was witness to a dispute between a Spanish gentleman and a military officer, which led to a combat, in which the latter struck off the nose of his adversary, and it fell into the sand. Fioravanti look it up, washed it with warm water, dressed the part with his balsam, bound it up, and left it undisturbed during eight days, at the expiration of which time he examined it, and was surprised to find that the wounded parts had adhered.—Taliacotius relates that, in a fray between some drunken young men, one of the party had his nose cut off by a sword. The assailant fled, and was pursued by his opponent, regardless of his nose, which was left in a gutter. Taliacotius picked it up, cleaned it, and, upon the return of its owner, adjusted the cut sur- faces with particular accuracy, so that complete adhesion followed—The