Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2143

WILLIAM STEWART HALSTED (1852-1922) Surgical papers. Johns Hopkins Press 1924 Vol. I: xliii, 586 pp., 48 plates (front., part fold.) 57 illus., tables; Vol. II: vii, 603 pp., 55 plates (front., 2 col. fold.), 8 illus., tables (part fold.). 25.8 cm.

When Halsted died at the age of seventy, he was one of the most eminent American surgeons and had introduced more new surgical techniques than any other American surgeon of his time. Professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins for many years, he was the first to introduce rubber gloves into the operating room and the first to use silver foil as a wound dressing. Halsted promoted the use of fine silk thread instead of catgut for sutures, stressed the careful handling of living tissue, was the first to successfully ligate the first portion of the subclavian artery for aneurysm, and urged special care for infected wounds. Volume I of this work contains Halsted's first published contribution to surgery, "Refusion in the treatment of carbonic oxide poisoning" (1883). The papers in the two volumes are arranged chronologically and cover surgery of the great vessels, carcinoma of the breast, plastic reconstructive surgery, special techniques in intestinal suture, improved techniques in the operative treatment of inguinal hernia, experimental surgery of the endocrine glands, and biliary surgery. Halsted's extensive bibliography is in Volume II. The volumes were carefully edited by Walter Cleveland Burket (b. 1888) and contain three portraits of Halsted at different ages. Burket was born in Kansas and received his medical education at Johns Hopkins. He practiced surgery in the Chicago area and taught at the University of Chicago Medical School for many years. He did many special studies of the spleen, aseptic anastomosis, suture of large arteries, and transplantation of the trachea.

Cited references: Cushing H82

Gift of John Martin, M.D.