A successful Caeserean section for a large bony tumor choking the pelvis

Kelly, Howard A. (1858-1943). A successful Caeserean section for a large bony tumor choking the pelvis. In The Medical and Surgical Reporter 62, no. 4 (Jan. 25, 1890): 100-106. Whole number. xii, 95-126, xiii-xxiv pp. Text illustrations. 253 x 173 mm. Original printed wrappers, detached, a little chipped. Very good copy, with Kelly's presentation inscription to Henry M. Hurd (1843-1927) on the front wrapper: "Dr. Hurd Compliments HAK."

First Edition. Kelly's paper describes his third cesarean operation, undertaken to remove a tumor blocking the pelvis of a pregnant patient. At this time cesarean sections were rare: two years previously, while practicing in Philadelphia, Kelly had become the first surgeon in that city in fifty years to perform a cesarean operation successfully. Kelly joined Johns Hopkins in 1889 as one of the "Four Founders" of the university's school of medicine. During his forty years at Johns Hopkins, Kelly made major advances in gynecological and abdominal surgery, and was responsible for establishing gynecology as a separate field from obstetrics. An extraordinarily skilled surgeon, Kelly combined "extreme dexterity with speed and decisiveness . . . [basing] diagnosis and treatment on the modern pathology of infectious disease and tumors" (Dictionary of American Biography). Kelly presented this copy of his article to Henry M. Hurd, the first superintendent of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.Presumably Kelly inscribed the separate issue of the journal because he had no offprints of the paper.