But Erichsen was shortsighted about the future of surgery, which he believed was rapidly approaching the limits of its powers by the middle of the nineteenth century. History will remember the whiskered surgeon for his misguided prediction: “There cannot always be fresh fields of conquest by the knife; there must be portions of the human frame that will ever remain sacred from its intrusions, at least in the surgeon’s hands. That we have already, if not quite, reached these final limits, there can be little question. The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut from the intrusion
...more
