The alleged malpractice suit of Walsh vs. Sayre.

  • Sayre, Lewis A. (Lewis Albert), 1820-1900.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The alleged malpractice suit of Walsh vs. Sayre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    quarters of an inch, when the pus spurted out in a full stream, striking on the office floor, some distance from the child. The flow was suddenly checked by a large slough which filled the opening. This was pulled at with forceps quite strongly, and not being able to extract it, I enlarged the incision slightly, and its removal was followed by another gush of pus, of which more than a pint was caught in a basin, independent of what had been lost on the floor. This pus was mixed with a number of sloughs of cellular and connective tissue—one of which was con- siderably larger than a black walnut—and was the piece removed with forceps after the incision had been enlarged. The mother became very much excited when I pulled out the slough above described, and she saw the pus spurting out from the wound. Seizing the child in her arms, she rushed around the office in a frantic manner, and it was with great difficulty that we could keep her still long enough to apply some solution of carbolic acid to the wound, and adjust a bandage. I requested her to re- turn on the following morning, that I might ascertain the came of the abscess, and thus be able to put the child upon some proper plan of treatment for its removal. This she promised to do as she left the office, but did not keep her promise, and I never heard from the child again until I was served with a notice of a suit for malpractice, in which I was charged with having punctured the hip-joint. As the child was the best possible—in fact, perfectly conclusive—evidence that this charge was false, I insisted upon bringing it into Court for the purpose of personal inspection. The child was brought into Court, but Mr. Edwin James, her counsel, objected to the personal inspection as a personal trespass—and would only permit an oral examination, which, in a child of only 7 years, was, of course, useless. The Court sus- tained Mr. James, as there was no precedent allowing personal inspection previous to the trial of the cause. Satisfied that the principle was correct, and if there was no precedent, it was time