662 Sir James Mackenzie Davidson [May 5, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, May 5, 1916. 



Sir James Reid, Bart., G.C.V.O. K.C.B. M.D. LL.D. F.R.C.P., 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir James Mackenzie Davidsox, M.B. CM. 31. RJ. 



Electrical Methods in Surgical Advance. 



No institution in the world has contributed so largely to electrical 

 science as the Royal Institution of Great Britain. All our modern 

 electrical developments are based to a greater or less extent upon 

 the work of Michael Faraday and his master, Sir Humphry Davy ; 

 and it is fitting that in the place which will always be associated 

 with their labours some account should be given of those same 

 electrical developments as applied in the present day to the art of 

 the surgeon. 



Surgery has benefited very greatly from electrical science. Before 

 electricity came on the scene, the examination of wounded men who 

 had bullets lodged in their tissues, or bones broken and injured by 

 the impact of bullets, was largely dependent on guess-work. As an 

 early instance of the tentative application of more scientific methods 

 to cases of this kind, I may mention the famous Garibaldi, who, 

 wounded in the ankle by a bullet at the battle of Aspromonte in 

 1862, suffered for a long time because the wound refused to heal. 

 Distinguished surgeons were sent to his aid, but none of them could 

 decide whether the trouble was due to an impacted bullet in the foot 

 or not, until the celebrated Frenchman, Auguste Nelaton, devised an 

 ingenious arrangement with which he solved the difficulty. He 

 placed at the end of a whalebone probe a button of porcelain, and 

 introduced this into the wound, pushing it forwards as fur as it 

 would go ; then he twirled it round to make a rubbing contact with 

 whatever it was touching, and on withdrawing it he rejoiced to find 

 upon the tip a black mark caused by lead, thereby clearly proving 

 that a bullet was impacted in the foot. The foreign body was sub- 

 sequently removed, and the great upholder of the liberties of nations 

 was completely restored to continue his heroic struggles. 



Even this ingenious probe of Nelaton, however, was strictly limited 

 in its utility, being able only to detect lead. Nowadays, there would 

 be small scope for such a procedure, in view of the large numbers of 

 wounded men having in their tissues foreign bodies which may 



