Abstract
Gone is the subheading "Purity of the Dressers and Surgeons" as is the picture of Professor Lister's carbolic spray and the use of leeches (choose the thinnest and most lively) for treating local congestion. Readers will have guessed that I am looking at the original edition and that purity refers to clean hands and dress and not to holiness. It was so full of practical help (much applicable today) with 233 illustrations that its achievement in reaching the centenary and becoming the oldest surgical textbook in the English language is understandable. Walter Pye, a surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, died young and it is a tribute to subsequent editors that its standard has been kept up and purpose maintained: practical help for senior students, young doctors in hospital, and for lone practitioners working in underdeveloped countries. This centenary edition is a worthy tribute and has a new look; the editor has been assisted by John Smith of Sheffield and 25 other contributors. Since 1977 the section on brain death and care of the dying has been expanded and much other material rewritten and brought up to date. The pictures are better, especially the halftones on matt paper; the fracture in the carpal scaphoid bone (page 273) can even be seen. The preface by James Kyle is a masterly statement about the principles of good medical practice? a modern Hippocratic oath.
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