IS IT APPENDICITIS, OR?
By Editor
THE following from the Christian Work ought to open the eyes of many who are persuaded by physicians, upon the occasion of any belly-ache, more or less severe, to have an operation: Discussing in the Medical News the "expectant" treatment of that fashionable malady, appendicitis—fortunately the malady is not quite as fashionable now as it used to be—Dr. A. C. Bernays, of St. Louis, makes what he himself calls "confessions," expressing at the same time some doubts of their wisdom. The latter point, of course, is not for lay decision; but, beyond any question, his confessions are of extreme interest to the layman, in that they will first amuse, and then terrify him. After saying that, in a good many of the so-called interval operations for appendicitis, the miserable little vestige is found to be either "shamefully normal" or affected by slight and innocuous changes, and that, in these cases, the patient derives only a psychical relief from his "perityphlitophobia," Dr. Bernays adds: "I can not throw off a feeling of embarrassment when I pull up a perfectly normal appendix before a corona of students or distinguished visitors. This embarrassment must be quite serious, when a normal appendix is removed in six or eight cases in one day, as recently happened in a well-known hospital." So much for what the surgeons, according to one of them, sometimes do, and then follows some really blinding light on one method of explaining away the thing when done: "Fortunately the histologist will always find infiltration of 'small round cells' in the mucosa and submucosa. The friendly pathologist does not mention that the mucosa of the appendix is always richly supplied with lymph follicles, hence the copious infiltration of leucocytes will always be present, no matter how normal an appendix may be." These secrets, not of the prison house, but of the operating room, are not reassuring to the ordinary citizen who is waiting with apprehensive patience the day when he, too, will have a sharp pain in his midst, and be hustled off to the dreadfully clean and cool table, whither so many of his friends have preceded him. Probably we are destined to get severely scolded for dragging the revelations from a place where they would have met only professional eyes, and spreading them out for the view of an unprepared public, but we will take the chances of that. If the doctors want to prevent common people from reading their papers, they should not make them so interesting, and they should not send them around to the newspaper offices.