'it is found that certain sensory and motor phenomena, due to lesions within the spinal canal, are amenable to operations, which are attended by a measure of success sufficient to offer a prospect of relief to a distressing, and hitherto regarded, as a hopeless, class of sufferers. The spinal membranes and the cord itself can be exposed, and neoplasms and encroachments upon the lumen of the canal may be removed therefrom without unduly hazarding life. Such interference is unsparingly condemned by writers on the subject, their remarks, however, being applied to injuries, as no such operations have been hitherto contemplated in idiopathic cases. They contend that they are, first, full of danger, being difficult, prolonged, and attended by profuse haemorrhage; secondly, that the operation could hardly benefit the patient; and, thirdly, that no one had yet been able to present a successful case. Each of those points has now lost its validity.' (308)

 

'The first operations of this kind were undertaken by me for the relief of paraplegia due to angular curvature of the spine... in 1883.' (308)