Clinical gynaecology : medical and surgical : for students and practitioners

Preface

The impulse which has been given to the clinical teaching of medicine and surgery during the past ten years by the establishment of numerous post-graduate schools throughout the country has been communicated to recent text-books, in which the practical has largely superseded the theoretical. The practitioner at the present day is not only keenly alive to the fact that immense advances have been made in medicine since his studentdays, but is filled with the laudable ambition to keep abreast of them. To enable him to do this, information must be imparted to him in a clear, concise, and more or less dogmatic form. This is the object aimed at in the present volume, which represents the combined experience of a number of clinical teachers selected by the former editor as men who, while disposed to be conservative, were none the less progressive and free from hobbies. The success which has attended the publication of the volumes of the International Clinics led the publishers to believe that a work on gynaecology treated from a clinical stand-point would find a place in the voluminous literature of diseases of women.

Owing to the untimely death of Dr. Keating, the completion of the work devolved upon the present editor, who has as far as possible carried out the plans and wishes of his lamented predecessor. While seeking to preserve that coherence which is desirable in a text-book, he has in the main allowed each contributor to consult his own judgment with regard to the arrangement and phraseology of his article, believing that in this way the individuality of each would be best preserved. In view of the needs of the student and busy practitioner, especial attention is given to diagnosis and treatment, the sections on pathology being less extended than in most text-books on gynaecology.

Especial care has been taken in the preparation of the illustrations, a large proportion of which have been drawn or photographed for this work under the immediate supervision of the contributors. Occasionally illustrations from other sources have been used, when particularly useful

IV PEEFACE.

and appropriate. Numerous cuts of various gynaecological instruments have been kindly lent by surgical instrument makers, to whom a grateful acknowledgment is due.

The editor takes this occasion to fulfil a promise made to the late Dr. Keating. It was the latter's expressed wish, when he recognized the fact that he would be unable to complete this work, that he should not be held responsible for any views contained in it regarding the destruction of the living foetus which might appear to be contrary to the tenets of the Catholic Church.

The introductory pages will be read with mournful interest as the last words of a gifted teacher whose voice and pen exercised a potent influence upon the medical world for over a quarter of a century. To those who have felt their spell in the past his latest utterances will appeal with peculiar force.