Introduction
Opening
a surgical text has a forbidding feel, page after page of closely set print
interspersed with pictures which sometimes help to explain the text but more
often confuse on account of their lack of clarity. Didactic teaching required
dull tomes to buttress the ethos of complexity so often promulgated by the
professional. Bailey and Love set out to alter this trend by presenting a text
that was colourful, readable and contained the precise information required by
the student of surgery. Since the first publication of this book in 1932,
surgery has become simpler to study. Greater knowledge simplifies and more
exact diagnosis leaves less to supposition and opinion. It is now easy to
verify an opinion, and even the most arrogant are worn down by the certainty of
the newer imaging techniques in providing an exact diagnosis. The spleen
palpated only by the consultant can soon be verified by computerised tomography
(CT) (Fig. 1.1).
Surgical
diagnosis is based on a sound knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology, a
specific history and examination with confirmation by imaging and operative
surgery.
It is unnecessary to learn what can be deduced, and thus studying surgery
concerns defining the basic facts on which the consequences of a disease process
can be built (Fig. 1.2).
It
is often surprising that a book entitled Short
Practice of Surgery does not contain more about operative surgery. The
actual operation in surgery is but one part of the process of