IMPORTANT SURGICAL ACHIEVEMENT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1445, 2 February 1885, Page 2

IMPORTANT SURGICAL ACHIEVEMENT.

A surgical operation, very remarkabl 6 and interesting, has been recently performed in one of the London hospitals. It consisted in the removal of a tumour in the brain which had been previously detected and localised by a physician in the light of Professor Ferrier’s experiments on the brains of living animals while under the influence of anaesthetics. Hitherto brain disease has been considered incurable, and its victims doomed. The symptoms have long been known, and the appa trances which indicate the existence of tumors have been recognised, and verified by examination after death. But the difficulty of determining their locality has prevented any effort being made in the way of their removal, and doctors have had to be content with giving temporary relief by means of drugs. Ferrier, however, has shown not only that a disease of this kind is essentially local its character, and may exist in an other- * wise healthy brain, but also that *be convulsions and palsies which mark its progress may be made the means of tracking the mischief to its source. In the case to which reference is made, the physician in charge of the patient so interpreted the movements of pain and distress which he saw that he was able to lay his finger on a particular spot of the brain and declare {that there a tumor was eating its way into the surrounding textures. With the consent of the patient, to whom the whole situation was carefully explained, it was resolved to remove it. In the presence of a band of eminent medi cal men, the skull was opened and the brain laid bare. At the precise spot which had been indicated, a tumour about the size of a walnut was found; it was removed without difficulty, and the man is now convalescent, not having a bad symptom since the operation. It is needless to enlarge on the importance of this result ; everyone must feel it. To the medico! profession the means by which it has been attained will perhaps be to the full as interesting and significant as the end itself. There can be no doubt that to Professor Ferrier’s experiments on living subjects is due the beneficent result we have spoken of, and which will no doubt be followed by many of a like nature. (It is no alight thing to have learned that the human brain can be operated upon in the way it has been in this instance without death or idiotcy following. That a propect of relief should be opened to sufferers from brain disease, perhaps the most distressing of maladies, by means experience derived from vivisection, should make us pause before visiting vivisection with entire condemnation.— Liverpool Mercury.