PREFACE.
In offering this little book to my professional brethren, I do not for one moment wish it to be understood that I claim any originality in the surgical treatment herein described.
Having read with great interest the Lectures on the “Physiology and Pathology of the Central Nervous System,” delivered by Dr. Brown-Séquard before the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in 1858, and published in The Lancet, I was struck with a fact much insisted upon by the learned physiologist, namely, the great mischief which might be caused in the system generally, and in the nervous centres especially, by peripheral excitement.
Constantly engaged in the treatment of diseases of the female genitals, I had been often foiled in dealing successfully with hysterical and other nervous affections complicating these lesions, without being able to assign a satisfactory cause for the failure. Dr. Brown-Séquard’s researches threw a new light on the subject, and by repeated observation I was led to the conclusion that the cases which had puzzled me, and defied my most carefully-conceived efforts at relief, depended on peripheral excitement of the pudic nerve. I at once subjected this deduction to a surgical test, by removing the cause of excitement. I have repeated the operation again and again, and it is the object of this book to show the results.
Daily experience convinces me that all unprejudiced men must adopt, more or less, the practice which I have thus carried out; and I have no doubt that, in properly selected cases, it will prove as successful in their hands as in mine.
It will be observed that the majority of the cases I publish have been taken from the records of the London Surgical Home. I have drawn my illustrations chiefly from this source, because the practice of the Institution being freely open to the profession, the cases have been observed by numerous medical men; and, I may add, that many have become firm converts to my views.