• Neurosurgery · Jul 2013

    Historical Article

    Head injuries in the 18th century: the management of the damaged brain.

    • Jeremy C Ganz.
    • Department of Neurosurgery, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway. jcganz@gmail.com
    • Neurosurgery. 2013 Jul 1;73(1):167-75; discussion 176.

    AbstractThe 18th century was the time when trauma neurosurgery began to develop into the modern discipline. Before this, the management had, for the most part, changed little from the days of Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen. Attention was directed to skull injuries, and the brain was treated as the seat of the rational soul but without other function. Symptoms after trauma were attributed to injuries to the bone and meninges. Following the lead of the Royal Academy of Surgery in Paris, it was accepted from the 1730s that the brain was the seat of symptoms after cranial trauma. During the 18th century, at least 12 surgeons published articles on cranial injury, 6 describing significant clinical series on this topic. They were Henri-François Le Dran (1685-1770) of Paris, Percival Pott (1714-1788) of London, James Hill (1703-1776) from Dumfries, Sylvester O'Halloran (1728-1807) of Limerick (Ireland), William Dease (1750-1798) of Dublin, and John Abernethy (1764-1831) of London. This article analyzes these series. Each individual made a different contribution. It is suggested that the relatively lesser-known James Hill in Scotland demonstrated the greatest understanding of the management of brain trauma and achieved the best results. A product of the Scottish Enlightenment, he adapted his management to his own experience and was not tied to the accepted authorities of his day, but he improved the management of each case following his experience with previous patients. He deserves to be remembered.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…