To Cheselden Operative Surgery is indebted for one of the most important
improvements, that the whole range of the profession can present. The
certainty and safety with which a most painful disease can be relieved,
stamps the lateral operation of Lithotomy as a bold and highly rewarded
effort of genius,—as a present of inestimable value to suffering
humanity,—and as a just cause of triumph to our national feelings as
surgeons.
It has now undergone the test of nearly a century, and, like all
improvements of real value, it has past through its ordeal with increased
rather than diminished credit.
Connected with a school that gave birth to the present lateral operation,
and deeply impressed with the conviction of its superiority over every
other mode of operating in this disease, I need offer no apology for
reviewing what appears to me to be the true principle of the operation.
A review of this kind is perhaps the more required at the present time,
when attempts are made by English, as well as Continental surgeons, to
revive a mode of operating that presents no advantage under ordinary
circumstances,—that was discarded by Cheselden,—and needs an equal test
of time and experience to shew its comparative merit. If want of success
in the lateral operation has thus led to its abandonment, it becomes a
question, how far it may be traced to a neglect of those principles which
guided Cheselden. To such as are laying aside lateral Lithotomy; the
following observations, by recalling their attention to his principles,
may prove useful; to those who still continue to practice it, they may,
by throwing a few lights on the subject, be interesting; and to the
younger members of the profession, by explaining a new and simple method
of performing the operation, they may perhaps be not entirely devoid of
instruction.