rhizotomyn.

1872 R. Dunglison & R. J. Dunglison Hist. Med. xii. 143 The division, which was made about that time, of medicine into surgery, dietetics, and rhizotomy or pharmacy, occasioned, as Celsus has well remarked, considerable progress in the art of surgery.

1892 Lancet 2 Apr. 756/2 While the learned dilettanti of the profession were too proud or too lazy to meddle with arts which in their eyes were beneath their dignity, the old ‘rhizotomy’ (medical botany) revived.

1994 P. M. Fraser in S. Hornblower Greek Historiogr. (1996) vi. 188 Botanical analysis gave way to rhizotomy, the handmaid of medicine.

1910 St. Luke's Hosp. Med. & Surg. Rep. 2 17 Dr. Dana, Starr and others diagnosed neuritis and Dr. Dana devised the root section operation. It might be called ‘Rhizotomy’. I divided the 6th and 7th nerves on emerging from the dura but inside the vertebral canal.

1955 Naffziger & Adams in A. B. Baker Clin. Neurol. III. xxviii. 1445 The conversion of a spastic into a flaccid paraplegia by anterior rhizotomy is now well established.

1977 Lancet 17 Sept. 594/2 Before the advent of drug treatment for spasticity, the only remedy lay in irreversible operations such as tenotomies and rhizotomies.

1992 Jrnl. Urol. 148 949 Rhizotomy of some sacral nerves was found to be necessary to facilitate voiding with stimulation.

2002 Time 25 Feb. 60/3 Spastic cerebral palsy is also the most treatable form of CP, largely thanks to a procedure known as selective dorsal rhizotomy, in which the nerve roots that are causing the problem are isolated and severed.