Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/57

 HISTORY OF GYNECOLOGY IN AMERICA xlvii

difficult and dangerous tumors, for the difficulties and dangers of the situation were not inherent but were actually created by the coarse, unsurgical procedure of ligation en masse, begotten of the unwarranted fears of the surgeon.

In 1892 a perfected technic was offered by Benjamin F. Baer, of Phila- delphia, a pupil of William Goodell, also advocating the ligation of the vessels independently without a single ligature in the tissues of the cervix, which was then dropped and buried underneath the pelvic peritoneum. ("American Journal of Obstetrics," 1892, vol. xxvi.)

In 1894 W. R. Pryor, of New York, advocated " A New and Rapid Method of Dealing with Intraligamentous Fibromyomata " in which he cut across the cervix from the free side, reached the intraligamentary tumor and shelled it out in a direction from below upwards. ("Medical News," 1894.)

Normal Ovariotomy, Pelvic Inflammatory Diseases.

In 1873 Robert Battey, of Rome, Georgia, read a paper before the Georgia Medical Association, published in the "Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal," 1873, advocating the removal of both ovaries for in- tractable dysmenorrhea and other aggravated troubles where the inva- lided patient could not be relieved by any other method. This operation, known as " Battey's," taken up by Hegar of Germany, and Tait of Bir- mingham, England, opened up the whole field of pelvic operations for diseases of the organs other than gross ovarian and fibroid tumors. Tait's experience with " Battey's operation" is shown by this quotation, "so far as my own work in Battey's operation is concerned, in not a single one of the six patients operated upon were the uterine appendages normal." ("Medical News," September 6, 1884.) It was a case of capere occasionem, and Battey's work was quickly followed on new lines by Tait, who opened up and developed the treatment of pelvic inflammatory diseases, which was noticeably taken from his hands in this country by the brothers Joseph and Mordecai Price of Philadelphia, by Arthur W. Johnstone of Cincinnati, E. C. Dudley of Chicago, and others. W. H. Byford (1817— 1890) originated, in 1885, the plan of dilating the opening of pelvic abscesses discharging into the rectum in order to secure efficient drain- age. ("Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner," January, 1886.)

It is hard for a younger surgeon in this day to realize how difficult it was for a surgeon in the eighties to emancipate himself from the errors of such Nestors in surgery as Emmet and Thomas, and to recognize as tubal inflammatory diseases and tubal abscesses, conditions which these great observers diagnosed as phlegmons developing in the para-uterine cellular tissues. The greatest surgical battle ever fought was I hat waged in the various obstetrical societies on this subject.