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Excerpt from The Surgical Assistant: A Manual for Students, Practitioners, Hospital, Internes and Nurses Surgical text-books, even those that deal most minutely with operative technics, make but scant reference to the duties of the surgeon's assistants. And yet the skill of the assistants is scarcely less important than the skill of the surgeon himself. In an operation the surgeon must depend, not only upon the experience and the caution of the anesthetist, but also upon the familiarity with aseptic details, the foresight and adaptability, and the coolness in emergency of those who aid him in the mechanical procedure itself. If we except a brochure by Dr. Carl Lauenstein - "Der Assistenzarzt" - which in neither scope nor execution has anything in common with this book, nothing known to the author has been written upon this important subject. The volume he presents is then, a pioneer, and as such, no doubt, has its shortcomings. In spite of these he believes it will be found a helpful guide - to the student preparing for hospital examinations or substituting in hospital or dispensary work; to the hospital interne who, early in his service, unfamiliar as yet with surgical technics or even with the names and forms of many surgical appliances, is, for a time, embarrassed by the awkwardness of his untutored hands and the slowness of his untrained eye; to the graduate nurse who, trained in the hospital operating-room only in the handing of sponges and towels, finds herself confronted in private practice with the necessity of preparing a room for an operation and very often of assisting actively in the operation itself; and to the general practitioner, as a volume of reference to aid him in maintaining a large share in the treatment of those of his patients who otherwise would pass from his entirely into other hands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbo