Neurosurgical Work during the Napoleonic Wars: George James Guthrie's Experience

Involved in what is still considered, along with the two world wars of the 20th century, as one of the major conflicts in Europe, George James Guthrie (1785-1856) was the most famous English army surgeon of the Napoleonic wars. After treating the injured throughout the Peninsular Campaign (1808-1814), in 1815 and then in 1842 he published two major books dealing with cranial and brain injuries, among other topics. In these books, we can find, for example, an early description of the plantar reflex further described by Joseph Babinsky, accurate descriptions of the clinical signs of intracranial hypertension, and details of the physiopathology of subdural and epidural haematomas. Skull fractures are also discussed intensively, along with the indications for trepanation, a much-debated issue at the turn of the 19th century. The dura was often the limit of the surgical field for Guthrie. Nevertheless, he tried to rationalize the use of trepanation and favoured its use in two main cases: in cases of depressed skull bones, jammed bone fragments or debris irritating the dura or the brain and in cases of life-threatening cerebral compression caused by supposed blood clots. In their works, Guthrie and his contemporaries did not address neurosurgery in the modern sense of the word, but rather 'cranial surgery' in most cases. Guthrie, who saw so many patients with brain injuries and amputations, failed to understand that cerebral functions could be localized to the cortex and neglected to describe the phantom limb phenomenon, as did most of his contemporaries.