The year 1890, the beginning of this series of cases, marks an important milestone in the history of the radical cure of hernia. This was the year that Bassini's epoch-making paper describing his method for the radical cure of inguinal hernia was published in the Archives f. Klin. Chir., giving additional report of the results in 201 cases. Halsted's method, in many points similar to Bassini's, had been briefly described in the first number of the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1889, although Bassini's had been published in an earlier paper read before the Italian Surgical Society, 1888.
But it was not until 1890 that the two methods were prominently brought before the profession. Prior to this time, beginning with Steele's first operation for the radical cure of hernia in 1874, Czerny's in 1877, Marcy's in 1878, one method after another had followed in rapid succession. While the immediate