The Fothergill Story

The Manchester Donald Fothergill operation (popularly known as Fothergill's operation) is a very old operation for uterovaginal prolapse. The textbooks we read as undergraduates had a brief description of the same, including the main components only. As postgraduates we never found the original description of the operation in any book. We saw the honorary gynecologists in our institute perform a modified version of the original Fothergill operation and we performed a similar operation ourselves as residents and later as staff members. I wrote a book in 1987 in which I described this modified form because it was the best for our patients. I later wrote an atlas of operative techniques along with my Registrar Dr Shah, who shot all the pictures in the Atlas himself. The technique in that book was also what we did. Now I am about to write a new edition of my book. I thought I should describe the original technique, and started looking for it. I found the original article dated sometime in 1935 on internet. It was available on the site of Obstetric Gynecological Survey for a fee. I don't do net banking and don't use credit cards. I would not pay so much money just read an article for historical interest. I asked colleagues who had worked as juniors in other institutes, and realized that they had different concepts of what the original operation was like, none but one had apparently read the original article, and that one did not put the Fothergill stitch while performing that operation. I finally found the article in my old edition of Shaw's Operative Gynecology. I would not perform it that way myself, but I will describe it in the new edition of my book on Practical Gynecology and Obstetrics, so that students will know what it was like instead of believing a Chinese whisper version they get taught or shown.