POSITION OF BRONCHOESOPHAGOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN

Abstract

THE SCIENCE OF BRONCHOESOPHAGOLOGY has reached a far higher standard in the United States of America than it has on the continent of Europe or in Great Britain, where it is doubtful if it has even been appreciated as a science, bronchoesophagoscopy having been considered mainly an examination of the bronchus and the esophagus. Endoscopy in Great Britain is passing through a curious phase. Bronchoscopy (an offspring of laryngology), nurtured by the laryngologists, struggling to live a separate life in the hands of the bronchoesophagologist, is being enticed or, more truly, kidnaped by its grandmother the physician or its foster brother the thoracic surgeon, while esophagoscopy is, to a certain extent, still the province of the laryngologist. Bronchoscopy, therefore, is being divorced from esophagoscopy. That a similar state of affairs is occurring in the United States of America is evidenced by articles appearing in various medical journals, notably that of