Modern Surgical Technique

M.D., K.L.H. (France), K.C. (Italy). 1938. Published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and London. Volume I:?General Operative Consideration, Surgery of the Head and Neck and Plastic Surgery. Pp. xiii plus 526 plus xix. Volume II:?Surgery of Nerves, Vessels, Bones, Surgery of Breast and Chest. Pp. vii plus from 527 to 1229 plus xxv. Volume III:? Abdominal Surgery, Hernia, Genito-Urinary and Gynaecologic Surgery. Pp. viii plus from 1230 to 2045 plus xxix. Complete in three volumes with 2,174 illustrations. Price, ?7-10 per set of three volumes. Not sold separately. Obtainable from Messrs. Butterworth and Company (India), Limited, Calcutta. Price, Rs. 100 This important new treatise on operative surgery successfully achieves a dual purpose; it describes in detail not only the common operations of surgery, but also the technique of many new methods. The author also carries out the promise made in the preface to describe the ' classical' operations of surgery, a lead that more than one standard textbook of operative surgery would do well to follow. The first volume opens with chapters which discuss broadly the patient before and after operation, surgical equipment, and anaesthesia. The figures illustrating the section on regional anaesthesia are specially noteworthy. The second part of this volume is devoted to the surgery of the head and neck, much space being given to new work on the skull and brain, especially the work of Krause. Orthopaedic surgery occupies much of volume II. In the section on tendon transplantation operations on the lower limb are minutely described, but no space is given to operations about the wrist. This is a pity because, owing to the use that can be made of the synergic action of the flexors and extensors of the wrist, better functional results can be obtained in this joint than in the joints of the lower limb. It is disappointing to find no mention of the use of the Smith Petersen pin in the treatment of fractures of the femoral neck, a procedure that has found worldwide acceptance. The work of Lorenz Bohler has won even more important recognition, but his methods receive no attention in this book. The section on the surgery of the thorax is full of much new work and makes most interesting reading. In this part will be found a reproduction of Meyer's illustrated description of pulmonary embolectomy with which every surgeon should be acquainted. Volume III describes abdominal and genito-urinary surgery, an operation of special interest being the author's method of electro-surgical obliteration of the gall-bladder. The book, though over two thousand pages in length, is easy to read, a feature being the printing of important passages in heavy type. Moreover errata are almost absent, although in future editions we hope to see corrected the passage that states that tn thyroid gland receives its blood supply from tn, ' superior thyroid, middle thyroid, and inferior thyroid ? (Vol. I, p. 437.) Also, surely figures 2085 and 210 have been accidentally turned on their sides? Certain gems of ' neo-grammar' appear, such a, ' skeletonize ', ' extra-peritonealization ', ' aseptization , and ' cholecystelectrocoagulectomy'. It is no use: w shall have to submit to this eventually but we shall g down fighting. _ . Though modestly described as succinct by its autnu , this is undoubtedly a major work, and destined to tak