The Address in Surgery
Authors: C. G. Wheelhouse
Journal: BMJ (1878)

MIL P1tESIIDEKT .AND GaT-LEMEN,-My first duty in assuming the *eeship of-to-day is, through yon, sir, to offer my grateful thanks to 9 bmmittee of Cbusicil for the coinfidence you have-reposed in me aqrnstug; the preparation of the present a.ddress to my care.}lPt*thougbul and awreciative survey of thb entire field of the labour fhis1ifetinme, letany-one enter upon itwhen he may, can hardly prove dtfirwha a difflcal and Ah onerous task..lt when, in the autunrn of last year, I received the distinguished hbboswrof an invitation from your Committee of-Council to deliver the .4res* in Surgery on the present occasion, the idea arose at once, and ijrstibly nm myvuaind,.that such ought to be its nature, and that such revie, fragmentary and imperfect as it must necessarily be, would pro.bably prove more generally'interesting to those assembled to hear it than the mere elaboration of any individual subject in surgery.I jmopose, therefore, that the present address.shall, in the main, be re- Utspective in character; that it shaU include, as far as is possible, the advances made in surgery during the period of my owsprofessional life- ime, snd shall gather together the chief gains upon which, as a pro.fssion, we can count as the result of our labours during that time.-Eun'IRICAL PRACTICES OF FORMER DAYS.-In the first place, I *61d hail -with satisfaction the fact that, while in the earlier history of surgery, as of medicine, empiricism was, of necessity, the chief guide men were contelt to follow, we are learning, as years roll on, to rely mote and more on the guiidance of strictly physiological principles.I do not-doubt, for instance, that it will be within the recollection of my w1bo ar Lrhere to day, -bow coMmon and regular a custom it was in former tiimes for almost every one to think it necessary that, at certain periods of the year Mie shouild be bled; not because he was eiter il1 or threatened with illness, but simply because it was the custom of the district in which he lived, the tradition of his family, or for some such purely empirical reasol.Or that many persons were content, for similar reasons, to bear the infliction of wearing, year after year, such nuisances as perpetual issues, setons, and such like means of "puifYing the blood!' aid " gttting rid of humours".Many is the arm that I have seen seared and scarred by such evidences of barbaric srgery, and many, I doubt not, has been the feeble constitutiondone to death by them.And, gentlemen, these things were not done in witful ignoriance; thywere niot done merely from paucity of knowledge: they were the e sults o empirical teaching, and, until the light shed by physio.3lcgal-seence upon the mysterio1us secrets of the animal economy had grown imto a brighter and more steady beaun, updn what' better guideWe misy loo1k back with horror upon the time when the surgeon, about to iamputatena limb, would arm himself with a brazier, the glow- mg cautery, and the-boiling pitch, because, -taught -by experience, be knew that these means would sometimes so suffice to staunch huemor- ihage that, perchance, his, patient might 'not die; but until Harvey arose and demonstrated the motions of the heart, and displayed before wonderibg minds -and' astonised eyes the great secret of the circula-