A letter addressed to James Syme, esq., Professor of Clinical Surgery, Edinburgh, in refutation of certain statements made both by him and others, his advocates, in relation to a case of stricture of the urethra, in which the operation of perineal section was performed / by Francis Burdett Courtenay.

  • Courtenay, Francis Burdett, 1811-1886.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter addressed to James Syme, esq., Professor of Clinical Surgery, Edinburgh, in refutation of certain statements made both by him and others, his advocates, in relation to a case of stricture of the urethra, in which the operation of perineal section was performed / by Francis Burdett Courtenay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1G remarked, that he should not have the slightest hesitation in recommending my life for assurance, although in May last he did not consider it worth a year’s purchase.’ ” Such is your account of the case and the manner in which you conclude its history. Now, every person who has watched the pro- gress of the discussions which have occurred in relation to your operation and treatment, cannot fail to have remarked the avidity with which you seize upon every trifling circumstance that you think confirms your own views and statements. It is, therefore, remark- able, that in the quotation which you make from the patient’s letter of the 1st of August, and with which you so flourishingly conclude, there is not a word quoted having reference to the then state of the urethra. You only venture to allude to the improvement in the patient’s general health, whilst you observe a careful and ominous silence with respect to the condition of the urinary canal. Would you have us thus believe, that the patient merely wrote to inform you of the conversation with the medical man, the improvement in his general health, and at the same time neglected to give you any information of the then condition of the urethra 1 But, on the other hand, if he did give it, allow me then to ask, why was this, the most important and interesting information, no matter whether good or bad, withheld 1 Will you even now publish that letter in extenso ? However, I shall not insist on this, as it appears to me, strange omission any further. But I now inquire of you, or rather I ask any persons reading these observations, if, after again reading over the concluding paragraph of the case as published by you, they would for a moment even have imagined, that within ten days of the patient’s return home, he experienced so much irritation in the region of one of the testicles, that he wrote to you to inquire if he might apply leeches, and that you in your reply had recommended him not to do so, .but to operate on himself with bougies for a period of six or eight weeks ? Again, and further, I ask, would such persons have conceived it possible, that in addition to all this, you had received two, if not more, letters between the 1st of August and the publication of your book in the November following from the patient, detailing the re-appearance of symptoms, which, if you had related as you could and ought, would have presented a very different view of the case