- A dictionary of medical eponyms

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We have only this French description: L'opération de Kehr consiste à procéder à la résection (on enlève) de la vésicule biliaire et du canal cystique. Ensuite il est procédé à l'ouverture puis il est pratiqué une désobstruction (on débouche) du canal cholédoque et du canal hépatique. Pour terminer le chirurgien met en place le drainage direct du canal hépatique.

Cholecystectomy was first performed by Carl Johan August Langenbuch, 1846-1901, in July 1882. It was then performed in 1889 by the New York surgeon Robert Abbe (1851-1928). He opened the duct of a 36-year-old woman with severe jaundice, removed a stone, sewed the duct closed with fine silk, and returned her to perfect health. Se was still in good health when the operation was recorded, in 1893.

As early as in 1886 the German surgeon Hermann Kümmell, 1852-1937, attempted the first choledochotomy (surgical incision into the common bile duct). Described in Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1890, 16: 237.

Other sources give credit for the first exploration to Scottish surgeon John Knowsley Thornton (1845-1904) or the Swiss surgeon Ludwig Georg Courvoisier (1843-1918).

Bibliography

John Knowsley Thornton:
The surgery of the kidneys. Harveian lectures, London, 1889.

Ludwig G. Curvoisier:
Kasuistisch-statistische Beiträge zur Pathologie und Chirurgie der Gallenwege. Leipzig, 1890.

Carl Langenbuch:
Ein Fall vom Exstirpation der Gallenblase wegen chronischer Cholelithiasis; Heilung.
Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1892, 19: 725-727.

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An eponym is a word derived from the name of a person, whether real or fictional. A medical eponym is thus any word related to medicine, whose name is derived from a person.

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