Surgical instruments are often named after the person who invented them or first used them. Thus, the Foley catheter is named after a nineteenth-century American urologist and the Drew Smyth catheter after a twentieth-century British gynaecologist. These eponyms were sometimes used – maybe still are – by examiners who seek to relieve the tedium of oral sessions by asking candidates who, for instance, Foley was. Mischievous examiners examining in partnership with Drew Smyth were known to ask candidates who were Drew and Smyth. Even more mischievous examiners would ask for details about the inventor of the Coudé catheter – a trick question because the catheter, invented in France, got its name because it had a bend in it. (The adjective coudé means bent.) It was, in fact, invented in 1836 by the Parisian urologist Louis Mercier, who later invented the double-bended bi-coude catheter.
Yet, though the trick question about Coudé had long been used by English-speaking medical teachers to tease their students – indeed, was such a chestnut that Cardiff students published a spoof biography of Coudé in their medical school magazine – it had somehow eluded one of the twentieth-century’s most prolific authors of surgical textbooks. His name was Hamilton Bailey and his texts were remarkable for their lavish use of illustration and their authoritative footnotes. His discovery of the true meaning of Coudé in 1958 provoked a letter to the British Medical Journal of memorable pomposity.
Sir – In volume 6 of the winter number of The Leech – the journal of the Cardiff Medical Students’ Club – there appeared an article on Emile? Coudé, 1800-70, a surgeon of Niort, France, who, it was alleged, invented, and in 1835 published an account of, the Coudé catheter. This biography was written in a serious and restrained vein, and was replete with two references, one to the autobiography of Emile Coudé, and another to Le Mois Medical for a description of the invention. In addition, the article contained a reproduction of a woodcut purporting to be a likeness of the inventor.
We have been able to prove that the whole of this article is a fabrication and the references are fictitious. To expose this deception is of practical importance. As a result of the hoax, a number of pages of the 11th edition of A Short Practice of Surgery that were passed for press have had to be reset in as far as the capital ‘C of Coudé is concerned, and biographical footnotes to Emile Coudé deleted.
To save others from falling into this mire, we hope that you will publish this letter.
The letter was signed not just by Hamilton Bailey but, probably at his behest, by the editor of Medical History and the president of the Société Internationale d’Urologie, who that year happened to be an Englishman.
Bailey might have fared better if he’d just smiled and owned up to being had. His pompous, and rather sad, attempt to excuse a minor ignorance that examiners were happy to exploit in students got its reward the following month when, in a letter describing what could have been a scene from Richard Gordon’s Doctor in the House, Dr Stephen Power wrote to the British Medical Journal.
Sir – The scene is a surgical ward of the London Hospital in the early twenties. Russell Howard is taking a teaching round, and is on the warpath.
RUSSELL HOWARD: What is the name of this catheter, you?
STUDENT: A Coudé, sir.
RUSSELL HOWARD: Why is it called Coudé?
STUDENT: After a French surgeon, sir.
RUSSELL HOWARD (with the well-known leer): Yes, and I suppose his brother Bi Coudé invented the other one.
Collapse of student.
Mr Hamilton Bailey must have missed this particular round.