The first American monograph on surgery on the human brain, also published in 1885 the Transactions of the American Surgical Association. Roberts was "one of the few American surgeons to advocate an aggressive exploratory approach to cranial fractures in an effort to avoid consequences such as infection, delayed seizures, and insanity. In his 1885 article in the Transactions of the American Surgical Association titled “The Field and Limitation of the Operative Surgery of the Human Brain,” he predicted that with antiseptic precautions and the growing knowledge of cerebral localization, operations on the brain would become commonplace. This work predated that of Horsley, Keen, and many others." (James L. Stone,"John Bingham Roberts and the first American monograph on human brain surgery," Neurosurgery, 49 (2001) 974-985).

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Roberts introduced the push-back procedure - backward displacement of the velum to ensure adequate speech.

Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.