Excerpt from Conservative Gynecology and Electro-Therapeutics: A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women and Their Treatment by Electricity
In preparing the sixth edition of a work on a branch of practical medicine that had appeared in its first dress twenty years ago, though entirely recast and rewritten ten years ago in its third edition and greatly altered since, the first duty of the author is to ascertain if the older messages to his readers have been living truths, as measured by our present knowledge, and to mercilessly lop off any that do not come up to that standard. In discharging this duty he accepts as evidence that the testimonies of those earlier editions against excessive major surgery in gynecology and the alternative methods urged were not only living truths, but presented in advance of the times, that the demand for this work has continued to increase with its age, and that so little has to be modified in the controversial portions of the text.
The author believes that great changes have of late appeared in the mental attitude of practical physicians towards the treatment of non-malignant pelvic disease, inclining strongly towards efforts at assisting nature to repair pelvic affections without operative intervention. Even the abler operative surgeons in this specialty are more conservative than formerly, and many have turned aside altogether to other operative fields. Yet he feels that a host of younger surgeons are still following in the pathway of these veterans, and are by no means omitting the early experimental chapters in the veterans' experiences so frankly acknowledged by the latter in our annual medical gatherings.
It is for this reason that the strong language condemning unnecessary operations and sacrifices of organs in non-malignant affections has been retained in the present pages, and the author would make his words even more forcible if possible. The need to call a halt is just as great to-day, with our colleges turning out so many new operators each year, each taught a dangerous familiarity with brilliant operations, and none taught how they might avoid them.
But, negative preaching is by no means the purpose of these pages.
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