THE ART OF THE BLOODLESS SURGEON.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 7 September 1908, Page 2

THE ART OF THE BLOODLESS SURGEON.

(By Raymond Blathwayt.) I here is nothing from which even the bravest man shrinks so pitifully as the •?2 j 1 6, surgeon -> even when it is wielded by-the. most skilful of his craft. And that perhaps accounts, in a measure, for tha extraordinary success which has attended the -knife-less and bloodless methods of Mr H. A. Barker, the well-known bone-eetter of Park Lane, London, whom succession of Mr Button and his own cousin, Profesor Atkinson has for many years operated upon thousands of sufferers from all kinds of joint irregularities and displacements. Mr Barker, who occupies the same position in the estimation of the English public that Professor Lorenz does in Austria, who performed a remarkable operation upon little Miss Armour, the daughter of the American millionaire is the son of a well-known lawyer, and he was born just under forty years ago, although he looks many years younger. Ho is,a man whose very aspect inspires confidence. No patient can meet that calm, grave glance" nor experience tho touch of the skilled, sure hands, behind which lies thestrength that comes of vast experience and the certainty of knowledge and constant accomplishment, without feeling that his fate is m the best possible hands. And, as a matter of fact, he is in the presence or the most accomplished exponent of his craft in the whole world. For a man ..who has .been appointed practitioner, or who occupies the position of practitioner, to the first athletic clubs in hin gland is naturally a man who stands m «»e very front rank of his profession, whilst the fact that only recently he performed over one hundred -operations in two days is ample testimony t-V his undoubted practical experience. There is scarcely an accident, either in the world of society or in the athletic world, which is not sooner or later placed_ m the hands of the' English specialist, and in his case-books are to be seen the names of some of the most distinguished people of the day. The late Dr Barnardo. himself a most able physician, testified in ithe highest terms to Mr Barker's remarkable efficiency; whilst.only two days ago the Archdeacon of London wrote to me that the cure that Mr Barker-had effected in the case of his own ward was far beyond" all expectation. Like his predecessor Huttbn, who will be-best remembered for his remarkable cure of Fred Archer the ]oc; key, Mr Batker relies entirely upon manipuliation; ; f<>r'^jthe results he' . bungs ini^thj^jKJeme^ying x?feXall: ln?K -^C ■'■30in^3ef p|^ties.>dislgcatioWa,: and: .*iir;ts., {-All- Hii work-: is^done Ib^ .manipulation, and his whole: piofesipnai ,lire has been ; ,one - vigorous, ciusa'de against 4 /the ;:.t^frieque.nt^^se:-^ •i«the;: knife; whilst the ca^es in which he has stepped in just in- time to save limbs from mutilation by cutting are legion. yP 6 9 f tne most remarkable irstances ci his method was his cure of a spldifer of the Royal Field Artillery, serrirM under Major the Hon. F. Addington in India, who was thrown violently from us horse, thereby sustaining a terrible iniiiry to his spine. Two or three vertebral bones: were dislocated, .aiid as n consequenca paralysis supervened, and Kdward Batty was sent home to Netley Hospital., from which plac«, however, w«9 discharged as hopelessly incur--ftblo:by the first Army surgeons of the day. As a last ,re£OmcG, he was carried into Mr Barker's'-h^uf^'whr-re the emin-' ent bone-setter diagnosed the injury as pressure on the spinal cord. In a'few morneuts the irregularity was adjusted, and the man, who was carried- into-the nouse bent double aond iii an almost dying r-ondition walked out of the room completely cured. This case ranks as one of; the most remarkable operations on record. . Any ..person interested in the annals of the football-field will remember how Air O.T. Norris, the late captain of Oxford University Football Club, was so severely .-injured during the course of a match that, he could not play for nearly two years. Many surgeons;, indeed, had declared that only a cutting operation could relieve ihe injury to the knee. Mr Barker, however, on being consulted. , operated mampulatively unon -the player, with the result that Mr Norris was perman- j entry cured, and he has played football ever since. And these cases rould be multiplied literally by the hundred. Mr Barker s most cherished ambition—n.n ambition for which he has worked for yeans in the teeth of the fiercest opposition to achieve—is to have every student ianght the art of bone-sotting. The '•'Lancet" declared some time ago that it was a "negjected corner of the domain of surgery," and it is apparently lust as little understood to-day. This lack of knowledge of so useful'ah art is a. deplorable state : pf, a flairs, ? and the cause of: a very great deal of imnecos- . sary suffering No man living has per-• formed so successfully upon as manythousands- of cas^s of the kind he nni dertakes as Mr Barker, and upon thework of no-man can so nnicli"outside testimony be brought to boar. He therefore speaks with an authority backed by an unparalleled practical (-x----penence.. And though his fight with the exponents of the ordinarr" surpicai methods has been a long and a stern one, the victory has been won. and there ;.s probably not a- single surgeon living, who has intelligence enonplv to understand his methods, who d^os not in his heart of-hearts wholly believe in them. In onp of his last published letters, my old friend D-vid Christie Murray, one of +h^ kind-st-hearted and hardest-hpaded men I ever knew, wrote thus of Barker's methods: "I write in the knowledße ..that this branch of thij healinc; art has been neglected by the medical profe-sion. and in the hope that this letter may in some degree advance tho of bloodless surgery." Despite all rofessional jealousy or organised o^-'-sition, Mr Barker, mainly by virtue of the success of hjs methods, reigns supreme in the special field he has chosen for himself. for never was tho truth of the old proverb more vindicated than in his case.—"Nothing is so successful as success."— "The Sketch."