Pioneer surgery in Kentucky : a sketch / by David W. Yandell.

  • Yandell, David Wendel, 1826-1898.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pioneer surgery in Kentucky : a sketch / by David W. Yandell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sons, was an amputation at the hip-joint. It proved to be the first operation of the kind in the United States. The undertaking was made necessary because of extensive fracture of the thigh with great lacera- tion of the soft parts. The subject was a mulatto boy, seventeen years of age, a slave of the monks of St. Joseph’s College. The time was August, 1806; the place, Bardstown; the surgeon, Dr. Walter Brash- ear; the assistants, Dr. Burr Harrison and Dr. John Goodtell; the result, a complete success. The oper- ator divided his work into two stages. The first con- sisted in amputating the thigh through its middle third in the usual way, and in tying all bleeding, ves- sels. The second consisted of a long incision on the outside of the limb, exposing the remainder of the bone, which, being freed from its muscular attach- ments, was then disarticulated at its socket. Far-seeing as the eye of the frontiersman was, he could not have discerned that the procedure by which he executed the most formidable operation in surgery came so near perfection that it would successfully challenge improvement for more than fourscore years. Hundreds of hips have since been amputated after some forty different methods; but that which he intro- duced has passed into general use, and (though now known under the name of Furneaux Jordan’s) re- mains the simplest, the least dange'rous, the best.