An account of seventy-six consecutive cases of abdominal section : (performed between December 23, 1879 and November 1, 1880) / [R.L. Tait].

  • Tait, Lawson, 1845-1899.
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of seventy-six consecutive cases of abdominal section : (performed between December 23, 1879 and November 1, 1880) / [R.L. Tait]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    claim advantage for either, and I propose to discontinue the column because I use no other method but that of the silk ligature in the form of the Staffordshire knot. Finallj^ the weight of the tumour is a wholly useless record. There are certain columns which I propose to add to the tables I shall in future employ which will indicate the nature of the disease for which the operation is performed and the kind of the operation sufficiently to enable any investigator to classify any cases as he sees fit. This is wanting in Mr. Wells' method of tabulation; as for instance, in the case of parovarian tu- moui'Sj for I do not see any clue to the number of those which have occurred in Mr. Wells' practice. Yet the disease is wholly different from cystoma of the ovary, and an operation under- taken for it should not be classed as an ovariotom}-, though we have all, up to the present, been making this mistake. Nay more, we have all been committing a much more serious blunder. Along with the parovarian cyst we have been removing a healthy ovary and Fallopian tube, though in very many, perhaps in most cases they might have been spared with advantage. At page 431 of his book on Diseases of the Ovaries Mr. Wells says, I am of opinion that a healthy ovary should not be removed from any woman at any age. Yet I have seen two such removed (not by Mr. Wells) in the same afternoon at the Samaritan Hospital, along with simple parovarian cysts from which I think they might have easily been separated and left. Finally, the plan of table I propose for the future to employ will include in it all the abdominal operations I perform ranged in strict order of date, and this will suppl}' a very important piece of information too generally omitted, the number of exploratory and incomplete operations in proportion to the completed cases. For these and other reasons thex-efore I shall for the future publish my tables for periods of time and not for number of cases, and shall include in them everything of the nature of an abdominal section which I perform ; and in this way a much more intei'esting historical record of personal expe- rience will be given than can be secui-ed in any other way, and 1