An address delivered before the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in the city of New York, February 28, 1871 / by George A. Peters.

Peters, George A.

Date:: 1872

Credit: An address delivered before the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in the city of New York, February 28, 1871 / by George A. Peters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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$to the bed, to complete recovery, with unabraded integument, ■a sound heel, and a-limb, if not absolutely the length of its fellow, so near it that the accurately graduated tape-measure scarcely discovers the difference. One would suppose that results such as these, so frequently observed and recorded, would challenge the attention of sur- geons abroad. Here, however, is a rare instance of honor awarded to a prophet in his own country, and his teachings disregarded in other lands. It has been with the utmost difficulty that young and enthu- siastic American surgeons, travelling abroad, could secure atten- tion to this method of treatment, or obtain the opportunity to apply it. Even when applied it has been, by the majority, treated as a Yankee invention, and given the go-by. So prone are we to look with disfavor on another's offspring. The use of plaster-of-paris in the treatment of fractures— simple and compound—has given us a neat, firm, and durable dressing, which the surgeon of to-day would be loath to ex- change for the cumbersome and awkward splints of the olden time. During my student life, and in my early experience as an hospital interyie, all operations were done without any, save the most inefficient and bungling, efforts to prevent pain. The patient was bound like a malefactor for the trial by question. The glistening blade went keenly through integument and muscle, and the saw crashing through the bone. The actual and potential cautery was presented to his notice in all its naked deformity, wearing not even a mask to hide its ugliness. All discussion, as the operation proceeded, was poured into his unwilling but listening ear, until, between pain and terror, he was little better than a maniac, screaming and struggling in the hands of the inquisitors. It is readily seen that the effect of all this was not especially soothing to the nerves of the surgeon; and brave and strong indeed must have been the man who, under such circumstances,$