Lectures on the Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment of Abdominal Tumours
Authors: T. S. Wells
Journal: BMJ (1878)

Amount of hIwman Life Saved 1)y Ovariotomy-Antise,ptics in Abdominal Surgery.MR.PRESIDENT AND) GENTLEMEN,-In the arrangement of the subjects of the six lectures of which this is the last, I proposed, in the fifth lecture, to give some account of cases where, after the removal of one ovary, disease had appeared on the other side, and led to ovariotomy twice on the same patient.But the time which remains is so short that all I can say now is that, besides the four cases recorded in my book On Diseases of t/e Ovaries, to which I have so often been obliged to refer, I have operated a second time upon seven other patients, all of whom bave recovered.In one other casc, where the disease recurred on the same side, or rather where there was a regrowth from the pedicle (the first operation having been performed by another surgeon), the patient died.In another patient, the second cyst was not the other ovary, which was healthy, but a cyst which appeared to have formed where some firm adhesions had been separated at the first operation.This patient recovered.I wished also to say something about ovariott.myperformed during pregnancy; but all the time allows me to say now is, that since the nine cases which form the subject of my paper on Ovariotomy during Pregnancy, in the r-atnsactionts of the Obstetrical Society for 1877, 1 have had one other -uccessful case, followed by the birth of a healthy child at the full term of pregnancy; making ten cases, with only one death.Then I wras also anxious to say something about what has been called "normal ovariotomy", or Battey's operation.But as I have only once performed this operation, and, in the last twenty years, cannot recollect to have seen more than one other case in which I think there could have been any justification for recommending it, I will pass that operation over without further remark.And I will now recall the at- tention of those who were present at the last lecture to Lord Selborne's calculation of the amount of human life saved by the performance of ovariotomy in my own practice only.I am not going to say more of this public or non-professional view of the results of the work of onze British surgeon, by a great lawyer, whose intellectual power elevated him to the bead of his own profession; and I will endLavour to carry on the investigation and ascertain what the gain to human life in ft/ miain has been from this one operation.Writing in 1872, Pleaslee asserted: "It mrray be shiown that, in the United States and Great Britain alone, ovariotomy has, witihin the last twenty years, directly contributed more than thirty thousand years of active lite to women, all of which would have lbeen lost had ovaritomy never been per- formed."And no calculation is attempted of the lives of the children borne by the women saved.It is difficult to ascertain how many times ovariotomy has been performed since 1872.Gallez, looking over all the cases published till IS73 (excluding the cases of surgeons wlho had only operated once) collected together 1,540 cases, wvith i,oio recoveries, a proportion of 65.5 per cent.Olshausen has put togetl.erall the cases in the 7ahrrs/erichlen of Virchow and Ilirsch between i867 alid 1874, and gives a total of 1,oS7 operations and 7;I recoveries, or 69. 1 per cent.Ile has also obtained special reports of all the operations in Germany up to the beginniing of 1877, with a result of 6I3 cases and 353 recoveries, or 37 per cert.I should weary you if I were to en- deavour to give you the results obtained by different operators in different countries, but I hope that some day this iniformation will be obtained and brought before the profession in a trustworthy manner.