Publications by authors named "Robert C van de Graaf"

Introduction: Tobacco use disorder is a major public health issue, and novel smoking cessation approaches are urgently needed. Residential treatment programs have been suggested as a potentially effective treatment for tobacco use disorder. However, there is limited literature on residential treatment programs for patients who are exclusively dependent on nicotine.

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Article Synopsis
  • Petrus Camper (1722-1789) was a prominent professor who taught anatomy and surgery at several universities in the Netherlands.
  • In the mid-18th century, he conducted dissections to explore the anatomy of the arm and published a detailed atlas called "Demonstrationum anatomico-pathologicarum liber primus brachii humani fabricam et morbos."
  • His work included significant findings about tendon intersections, known as the "chiasma," which are crucial for hand function, ultimately enhancing the understanding of arm anatomy and pathology.
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AN EXAMPLE FOR THE PRESENT DAY: The current requirement for explicit quality standards and examination of surgeons is an opportunity to contemplate surgical training from a historical perspective by looking at the regulations of the Amsterdam Surgeons' Guild (1461-1736). At that time Amsterdam surgeons usually trained for five years in a master-apprentice relationship under the guidance of a master surgeon in a surgeon's shop. An important part of the surgical training took place in the botanical gardens and anatomical theatre, where, during the weekly lessons, the praelector anatomiae would also demonstrate anatomy on the bodies of the deceased.

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The famous Dutch medical doctor Petrus Camper (1722-1789) was appointed professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Franeker, Amsterdam, and Groningen. As Praelector Anatomiae of the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, he gave public anatomy lessons in the Anatomy theatre in Amsterdam. During the mid 18th century he performed dissections on corpses of children and adults to investigate the anatomy and etiology of inguinal hernias.

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Sir Charles Ballance (1856-1936) was the first surgeon in history to perform a facial nerve crossover anastomosis in 1895. Although, recently, several papers on the history of facial nerve surgery have been published, little is known about this historically important operation, the theoretical reasoning behind the operation or the surgical perspective in which Ballance developed this method. An original document on the operation, dated in 1895, is not known.

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The treatment of facial paralysis is generally considered to have been nonsurgical until the end of the nineteenth century. However, the authors discovered recently that already in the 1840s the celebrated German facial reconstructive surgeons Dieffenbach and von Langenbeck applied the technique of subcutaneous myotomy to healthy facial muscles to reestablish balance in the chronically paralyzed faces of their patients. They performed their operations at a time when anesthesia, asepsis, antisepsis, and antibiotics had not yet been introduced into surgery.

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