Abstract
Very often scientific publications begin with the pompous words: A new technique for., or An innovative method for.. But are these procedures really new? The French physician and philosopher Émile Littré (1801-1881) wrote the following in the foreword of his Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (Complete Works of Hippocrates): There is no development, even the most advanced of contemporary medicine, which is not found in embryo in the medicine of the past [12]. This opinion is easy to demonstrate by doing some research in a historical library. One will discover that old books not only provide palpable contact with the medical past, but also serve to establish the precedence of an idea, a theory or a technique. Regrettably, we often realise that most of the so-called new techniques derive from ideas which were already published but then forgotten. Numerous examples exist, but we restrict our list to just a few for obvious reasons.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Innovations in Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery |
| Publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| Pages | 3-10 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783540463214 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2008 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)