A letter addressed to Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, bart. : containing observations and strictures upon certain parts of his Lecture on spinal complaints / by Edward Harrison.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter addressed to Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, bart. : containing observations and strictures upon certain parts of his Lecture on spinal complaints / by Edward Harrison. 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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    precisely the same through the whole period, and were no better at the last. Here we have a circumstantial account of the different opera- tions performed upon a young lady for ten months, to overcome the lateral curvature. Its complete failure under the management of talented practitioners is a convincing proof that muscular exercises are unable to effect the desired object, or even to reduce, in the small- est degree, contortions already established. It will not, I think, be urged in favour of the preceding plan, that the trifling enlargement of a muscle or two near the arm-pit manifested any real benefit, or can be advanced in favour of the treatment. Muscles much em- ployed always increase in size, as we see in the porter’s legs and the blacksmith’s arms. Improvement in the back-bone and ribs ■would have shown that the muscular exercises bad done some good ; but since they remained unaltered to the last, we must record this as a complete failure, where no means had been left untried, or effort neglected to produce a favourable result. In this dilemma, and almost heart-broken, she became my patient. A cast was taken of her back before my treatment began. This will enable you, if you express any desire, to see the condition in which she left the asylum, and I shall have much pleasure in submitting her present figure to your critical examination. Mr. Bruce added, that he carefully attended to all patients with mis-shapen backs admitted into the asylum, and treated them according to the directions he received. He concluded by asserting that of all the patients with curvatures, who came under treatment, he never saw the smallest good follow the means adopted in a single instance, nor any abatement of the deformity effected during the long period that he had been connected with the Institution. The proceedings at the asylum are more worthy of obser- vation, from the acquired eminence of the attending practitioners and their avowed objects in founding it. Among other things, the con- sideration of spinal complaints made a conspicuous figure in the pro- spectus issued at the time, from which I conclude, that the cure of these disorders was intended to form a prominent feature in the arrangement of the Institution. It continued in existence about ten years, and therefore flourished long enough to enable the faculty to admit many cases of contorted spine, and to decide upon the relative merits of the different plans. Since they have neglected to lay the results of their experience before the public, you will, perhaps, take the trouble singly to supply the omission, and thereby confer a lasting obligation upon many practitioners who know not how to act in these perplexing emergencies.