Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

There was some animated correspondence in the British Medical Journal in October 1921 in reference to the claims made by the friends of the late Sir Peter Freyer, that he was the deviser of the operation of suprapubic prostatectomy and the removal of the prostate by enucleation by the finger and not by cutting. Sir Clifford Allbutt and Messrs Littlewood and Wilcox, however, have proved conclusively that the distinction is due to the late A.F. McGill, Professor of Surgery and Surgeon to the General Infirmary at Leeds. He described at a meeting of the British Medical Association at Leeds on August 18th, 1889, that he had already successfully performed the suprapubic operation, and he laid great stress on the fact that the mucous membrane was incised with scissors and the enucleation carried out with the finger, and that it was better to operate by a suprapubic than by a urethral or perineal route. In an adjoining room there was the astounding and unique spectacle of seven or eight old men sitting on a bench with their prostates in bottles on their knees.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

There was some animated correspondence in the British Medical Journal in October, 1921, in reference to the claims made by the friends of the late Sir Peter Freyer, that he was the deviser of the operation of suprapubic prostatectomy and the removal of the prostate by enucleation by the finger and not by cutting.

Sir Clifford Allbutt and Messrs. Littlewood and Wilcox, however, have proved conclusively that the distinction is due to the late A. F. McGill, Professor of Surgery and Surgeon to the General Infirmary at Leeds. He described at a meeting of the British Medical Association at Leeds on August 18th, 1889, that he had already successfully performed the suprapubic operation, and he laid great stress on the fact that the mucous membrane was incised with scissors and the enucleation carried out with the finger, and that it was better to operate by a suprapubic than by a urethral or perineal route. In an adjoining room there was the astounding and unique spectacle of seven or eight old men sitting on a bench with their prostates in bottles on their knees. Each patient had a card attached to him setting out briefly the clinical history of his case.

204 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Allbutt, Clifford (1836-1925) (22), Dewsbury-born physician (Leeds Infirmary 1861-89), inventor of the clinical thermometer, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge 1892-his death ·
• British Medical Association (1) ·
• Leeds General Infirmary (13) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Prostate cancer (1) ·
• Surgery (5) ·

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Similar

• 8 January 1925: Writing to Berkeley Moynihan, Clifford Allbutt recalls surgery at Leeds Infirmary in the 1860s
• 19 September 1866: Consciously breaking with medical tradition, Clifford Allbutt, physician, and Claudius Galen Wheelhouse, surgeon, cooperate at Leeds Infirmary to cure a pericarditis
• 16 February 1886: Clifford Allbutt explains to James Crichton-Browne why three years later he was to trade a lucrative medical consulting career in Leeds for a less well paid Commissionership in Lunacy in London
• 14 January 1867: Clifford Allbutt of the Leeds Infirmary writes to the Medical Times praising his five-minute Celsius pocket clinical thermometer
• 2 October 1893: Clifford Allbutt, late of Leeds, now a Cambridge professor, explains to Yorkshire College medics why university life is superior to a purely technical education
• 23 January 1888: Dr Henry Arthur Allbutt of Leeds launches a crowdfunder against being struck off for the affordability of his obstetrics and gynaecology manual for women
• 14 September 1868: Clifford Allbutt welcomes George Eliot to his house and new hospital in Leeds
• 15 April 1924: Writing to The Lancet, Clifford Allbutt tells how a nursing hack eliminated (typhoid) thromboses in the Leeds fever hospital in the 1860s
• 1 May 1878: The Mercury quotes T. Clifford Allbutt (Leeds Infirmary) on the commendable beastliness of northerners
• 19 October 1909: Opening a nurses’ home in Dewsbury, Clifford Allbutt describes their predecessors in the Leeds fever hospital in the 1860s