Re: VMs: Strange disorders

[RSRICHMOND@xxxxxxx]

Glen Claston writes:

>>"John Arderne was especially known for his surgery to correct anal fistula,

a disorder to which the English were thought to be particularly prone."<<

Particularly the ones whose horoscopes showed Uranus rising....

John Arderne - don't know his dates, 12th century I think - was one of the 
most skilled and daring surgeons of early times. He is supposed to have proposed 
and planned abdominoperineal resection (Miles procedure) of the rectum and 
anus for cancer, though without anesthesia or blood transfusion, or the ability 
to construct and maintain a colostomy afterwards, he could not actually 
perform the procedure.

He isn't better known to history because of the low regard in which surgeons 
were held at the time - they were thought of as no more than tradesmen, while 
the "internists" of the day were the academics. (To this day a surgeon in the 
U.K. is sometimes addressed as "Mister", or at least was 40 years ago.)

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN
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