William Macewen

Sir William Macewen CB, FRS, ( born June 22, 1848 in Port Bannatyne, Isle of Bute, † March 22, 1924 in Glasgow ) was a Scottish surgeon.

Life

Macewen studied medicine at the University of Glasgow with the degree of Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and Master of Surgery ( CM) in 1869 and the MD Completion in 1872. It was 1873 surgeon at the Western Infirmary, 1875 Assistant Surgeon ( Assistant Surgeon ) and 1877 surgeon at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. There he also held from 1881 to 1889 lectures and was after taking over the Chair surgeon at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow and also in 1883 at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. In 1892 he was Regius Professor of Surgery in Glasgow. Later he lived in Garrochty on the Isle of Bute.

Work

Macewen in Glasgow was a student of Joseph Lister, whose antiseptic techniques he developed a systematic and appropriate courses of action to be followed strictly and procedures introduced in the operating room ( thorough hand washing before surgery, sterilization of instruments, sterile clothing, etc.). He is known for many innovations in surgery.

He was a pioneer of brain surgery and was building on the work of John Hughlings Jackson and David Ferrier about the localization of functions in the cerebral cortex, that you can use this to determine the location of tumors ( 1876). He carried out the first successful surgery on the brain, in which a tumor ( meningioma ) was removed, which was previously localized only on the basis of epileptic symptoms. The patient survived for eight years, and at autopsy there was no new tumor. It was followed by many more successful operations of abscesses and hematomas in the brain and spine. He published an anatomical atlas of the skull and was regarded as a specialist in the surgical treatment of inflammatory diseases of the temporal bone ( there is the foveola Suprameatica in English also known as Macewen 's Triangle ), and he also studied experimentally bone growth and healing of bone wounds in animals. The diagnosis of the location of abscesses and hydrocephalus in the brain by tapping the skull was in English, also named after him ( Macewen 's sign ).

For his pioneering contributions to orthopedics include the first successful allogeneic bone transplantation ( when restoring a humerus 1881) and knee operations with the model developed by him and named after him osteotome. Both have been used a lot in the then widespread bone deformities due to vitamin D deficiency ( rickets ) of Macewen.

He developed a surgical method to remove a lung, which he applied in patients with lung cancer and tuberculosis.

Macewen of a surgical procedure for the treatment of the inguinal hernia stems ( hernia ). He also promoted the developments in anesthesia, transferred to it the use of the endotracheal tube in anesthesia back. He was a pioneer in the use of photographs in surgery and pathology for documentation and teaching purposes.

In World War I he was a founder of the Princess Louise Scottish Hospital for Limbless Sailors and Soldiers in Erskine, was the senior surgeon and also set up a prosthetic workshop, where he with the help of engineers from the nearby shipyards on the Clyde (river) a prosthesis developed ( Erskine Artificial Limb ).

Honors

In 1922 he was president of the British Medical Association. In 1902 he was made a Knight Bachelor. In 1917 he was Companion of the Order of the Bath. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1895 ) and honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England ( 1900) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow ( 1874).

Writings

• The infectious purulent of the brain and spinal cord diseases: meningitis, brain abscess, infective sinus thrombosis, Wiesbaden, J. Bergmann 1898
• The growth and shedding of the antlers of the deer; the histological phenomena and Their relation to the growth of bone, Glasgow 1920