Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/38

 xxviii INTRODUCTION

jaw. ("American Medical Recorder," Philadelphia, 1821, vol. iv.) Gross, in discussing this subject, states that many others had chipped off pieces of the superior maxilla, but Jameson was the first to re- move the entire jaw with the exception of part of the roof of the antrum, in 1820.

Excision of the lower jaw was first performed by W. H. Deaderick, of Rogersville, Tennessee, in 1810, although his report of the operation did not appear until many years later. ("American Medical Recorder," Philadelphia, 1823, vol. vi.) The operation was performed for a large enchondroma, involving the entire inferior maxillary bone and filling the mouth completely. The patient made a good recovery, and was reported well thirteen years after the operation.

Valentine Mott ("American Journal of the Medical Sciences," 1828, vol. iii) first excised the clavicle for malignant growth in the days before the introduction of anesthesia, the operation lasting four hours, forty vessels requiring ligation.

Interscapulo-thoracic amputation or removal of the entire upper extremity must have been a most heroic operation in the days before the introduction of anesthesia and antisepsis. Dr. Dixi Crosby, of Hanover, New Hampshire, was the first to perform this operation in 1836. ("Mono- graph by His Son," A. B. Crosby, Concord, New Hampshire, 1873.) His patient lived twenty-eight months and is said to have died with para- plegia, probably as a result of metastases of the growth to the lumbar spine. Twite-hell and McClellan, of Philadelphia, were also among the first to amputate the entire upper extremity for malignant growth.

One of the most important advances in the treatment of fractures was the use of extension apparatus. This method was first brought before the profession by Gross ("Autobiography," vol. i), who states that his preceptor, Joseph K. Swift, of Easton, Pennsylvania, was the first to use it. Gurdon Buck (" Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine," 1860-62, vol. i), of New York, deserves great credit for introducing the well-known apparatus for treatment of fractures of the femur, however, which is commonly known as Buck's extension. In his paper he reports his results including measurements in twenty-one cases.

Up to about fifty years ago dislocations were commonly treated by a barbarous system of pulleys and forcible extension, although manipu- lation had been recommended by several surgeons from the days of Hippocrates to Nathan Smith, who practised manipulation successfully in the reduction of dislocations. ("Medical and Surgical Memoirs of Nathan Smith," published after his death, in 1831.) Dr. William W. Reid ("Buffalo Medical Journal," 1851-52, vol. vii), of Rochester, New York, by a series of dissections and experimental study showed the ration- ale of reduction of dislocations by manipulation. He used manipulation