Introduction

Excerpt

Modern herniology, introduced by Bassini in the 1880s, soon accepted Russell’s theory (1906), which “rejects the view that any hernia can ever be acquired in the pathologic sense” [1]. Surprisingly, it was an anatomist (Keith 1924) who was the first to question this dogma, stating: “We are so apt to look on tendons, fascial structures and connective tissues as dead passive structures. They are certainly alive and the fact that hernias are so often multiple in middle-aged and old people leads one to suspect that a pathologic change in connective tissues of the body wall may render certain individuals particularly liable to hernia” [2]. His concept was ignored in favor of the belief that protrusions occurred because of congenital variations in normal anatomy. …