Surgery: a Treatise for Students and Practitioners

Abstract

IT is always a matter of satisfaction when a senior member in any profession writes a text-book, for the seniors who have attained to a high position have had unrivalled opportunities of practice which renders their opinions of the greatest value. Mr. Pick is therefore to be highly commended for the completion of his self-imposed task. The book contains, he tells us, the substance of the lectures which he has delivered at St. George's Hospital for fifteen years, and is the outcome of his experience as a hospital surgeon and teacher of surgery for nearly thirty years. It is worthy of comparison with the world-renowned text-book of surgery written by Erichsen, which has hitherto been the most satisfactory of all the English surgical works, and it bears the comparison well, for it is written on very similar lines. Mr. Pick's treatise has the advantage of being an original work, whilst Sir John Erichsen's has been adapted repeatedly to present needs, and however skilfully such adaptations are made they lack somewhat of the savour which first gives a successful book its vogue. Mr. Pick's work, too, is contained in a single volume, whilst Sir John Erichsen's, by a process of incorporation and the requirements of successive editions, has become two bulky volumes.

Surgery: a Treatise for Students and Practitioners

By Thos. Pickering Pick, Consulting Surgeon to St. George's Hospital. Pp. xix + 1176. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899.)