SIR FREDERICK TREVES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2454, 19 March 1909, Page 2

SIR FREDERICK TREVES.

A GREAT SURGEON. An article of very unusual interest appears in the “Pall Mall Magazine.” Its subject is interesting, and its writer equally interesting.' It is about Sir Frederick Treves, and it is written by Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, who was Treves’ pupil at London Hospital, but who has (made a great name for himself among the deep-sea fishermen of Labrador. It is Dr. Grenfell who has suggested to the Norwegian Government the advisability of sending officially to examine a grave said to be that of Andree, the ill-fated, explorer, and Dr. Grenfell has been asked to undertake tlie control of the necessary expedition. “To me he lias -always been tlie ideal all-round man,” says Dr. Grenfell, “and I would just as soon to-day take bis advice on how much of the main-sheet to get to claw -a vessel best to windward as I would on bow to venture in a surgical operation. ‘/If it ts a surgical lecture he is to deliver you can be sure you will go away with tho facts in mnemonic fashion. I remember his trying- to impress the definite existence of tlie peritoneum and its importance on our minds at a surgical lecture once, by saying: ‘Gentlemen, I have come here from dissecting a hippopotamus at the Zoo, and I w r as able*to swing it freely by its peritoneum.’ (He,was surgeon-in-ordinary to tlie London Zoological Gardens, to fill up the time between the thousand other duties.) “If I were asked to name -any man I have known personally, any where i who lias made the most of his life ,1 snould without hesitation say Sir Frederick Treves. Yet, with countless other interests and occupations, it is as a surgical author, and a most brilliant exponent of tlie surgical art, that Su Frederick has risen to fame. It was true oucc, and I believe it is true still, that Sir Frederick Treves is the most prolific surgical author alive. “His pen and knife were, when 1 first knew him, never idle; and I can hardly say from which I learned most. His boobs were classics on both sides of the Atlantic, and I doubt if any surgical work yet" written can compare with Treves’ ‘Operative Surgery’ for the practical assistance it gives to a young operator who is in doubt. “The book is just like the man. It says, ‘Do tins one tiling, Use that one instrument,’ ‘Make that particular incision,’ ‘lnsert that ligature and no other’—so that you can go up to your work confident that all will go well, rou are no longer in doubt and the tiepidation resulting from it, even though there be better ways of working; for you are inspired with your author sown confidence —a feeling so absolutely essential to success in surgery. Vou seem almost to see your patient walking av'ay grateful before you begin. “In teaching, also, at the London Hospital, I never knew' any man who could command the hearing he could. His house-surgeon would be taxed to his utmost on bis visiting days to get the great crowd that used to follow bir Frederick round the wards to allow space for oven nurses and dressers to the patients’ bedsides. “When acting m that capacitj • l myself have had to stand behind rows of graduates and undergraduates horn all over the world, who had come untold distances to hear him and were not going to be shouldered into the back ground, while the- humble, house-surgeon tried to create an unseemly disturbance by getting near the patient in order to explain the progress of the case. Not that that was generally necessary, tor, with ten thousand other duties, b Frederick always went round his wards alone and personally saw every one of his cases every Sunday morning, notebook in hand.”