Abstract
IN his presidential address to the British Medical Association, delivered at Manchester on July 23, Prof. A. H. Burgess reviewed some aspects of the influence of other sciences upon the practice of modern surgery. The era of modern surgery was inaugurated by Lister, and the present use of aseptic methods is merely the natural advance from the antiseptic technique as originally practised: antiseptics are still used for cleansing the skin and when sepsis is already present. As a sequel to the safety engendered by the use of these methods, the surgeon has access to all parts of the body, the spinal canal and thoracic cavity as well as the abdomen. Perhaps surgery is most indebted to the two sciences of physics and physiology (luring more recent years: it is only necessary to mention the aid brought by radiology, and radium and light therapy, by localisation of function in the brain, by the use of blood transfusion, by the discovery of vitamin D and insulin, and by the development of biochemical methods of investigating the bodys functions. Prof. Burgess recalled in some detail the influence which these various discoveries had exerted upon surgical treatment. X-rays were first used in the accurate diagnosis of injuries to the bones and in diseases of the chest, the bones being relatively opaque and the lungs transparent: where the density of neighbouring tissues is similar, it is now the practice to administer or inject either a substance which is opaque to the rays, or air, which is transparent, and so by displacing tissues or tissue fluids enables a differentiation of the organ under examination to be made from the neighbouring tissues. In Manchester, 20 per cent of patients pass through the X-ray department as compared with 1 per cent twenty years ago.
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News and Views. Nature 124, 154–158 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124154b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124154b0