Although possessed of the firmest nerves, so that his hand never faltered in the severest operation,[17] his sensibility was so keen that he sometimes suffered from nervous prostration after the strain was over. Many of his pupils no doubt recollect with what feeling--manifested even by tears--he recited the sufferings and dangers of a patient of his who was the subject of obstinate secondary hemorrhage. It was as a practical surgeon that Doctor Dudley justly attained a world-wide reputation, and especially as a successful operator in lithotomy. This operation he performed two hundred and twenty-five times, without losing a single patient until after his one hundredth operation, losing in the whole of his operations only about two per cent. So celebrated had he become for this operation as early as 1827 that the _Kentucky Gazette_ for April 11, of that year, records that he operated three times for stone in one day. He always performed the lateral operation with the gorget, and never until by previous preparation--by diet and medicine--he had brought the system of his patient to a proper state.[18] Then, with good nursing under his immediate direction in wholesome private lodging, the incision healed up by the first intention. Although the stone may have been so large that much effort was required to withdraw it through the incision--sometimes even attended with laceration--the patient was on his feet again in a surprisingly short period of time. The Doctor justly attached great importance to the preliminary constitutional preparation of his surgical patients. A notice of two of his earliest operations of this kind is given in the _Kentucky Gazette_ for Saturday, November 19, 1817. The one--the first he performed in Lexington--on Mr. S. Owen, of that place, and the other, "some time ago," on a little boy in Paris, Kentucky, which, according to Doctor C. C. Graham--who was his pupil at that time--was the first operation for stone performed by Doctor Dudley. He never used lithotrity or seemed to approve of that operation. Another surgical specialty was his great use of judicious and regulated pressure by means of the roller bandage in the cure of abscesses, in the control of inflammation, in the treatment of fractures, aneurisms, etc. No surgeon probably ever used it so extensively or so successfully. Few, even of his pupils, seemed to be able to apply it with the skill and judgment which characterized their preceptor. He was also an earnest advocate of the patient use of hot water--as hot as could be borne--in the control of inflammation. Where other surgeons resorted to poultices he applied hot water.