Surgeons in Chicago

"The art and love of the surgeon may, Pygmalion-like, make his work so exquisite and perfect that the great Jehovah will touch it into life, even as Venus made the marble Galatea into vibrant, palpitating life. The surgeon must, with fingers that are dexterous beyond compare and with mind that plans, see the completed result in his imagination. He models and commands the method, carries out the procedure, puts the parts into perfect apposition, but God knits the scar. "He sews severed arteries that they may carry their crimson torrent without leak and without hindrance. The delicate nerve must be spliced to give the return of welcome sensation to palsied arm. He sews the viscera so truly that they become watertight. He mends the splintered bone and repairs the lacerated flesh while holding to the skirts of the frightened spirit, lest it should flee in flight. "When a surgical operation is described as beautiful, it seems incongruous and uncanny to the layman. To one who can appreciate its beauties it is really the acme of artistic perfection. A resection of the stomach by a master like Mayo, widely excising the diseased part, restoring continuity and function, all so deftly, and beautiful in its beneficent invasion and conquest, is a magnificent epitome of the surgical art. " 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' but only the surgeon knows how uneasy lies the head that wields the knife. It requires such intrepidity, such clairvoyance. Cutting must be done with such consummate skill that no unnecessary or vital structure be injured. The layman thinks of an operation as purely a wielding of the knife. The surgeon actually does much more in hemostasis, in clean removal of pathological conditions, in the restoration of normal relations, in the sewing of tissues, and the closure of wounds. This is itself an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, even to the tying of the last stitch." With the foregoing apostrophe to Surgery, which he has served for 40 years. Professor William David Haggard of Vanderbilt University last week in Chicago assumed the presidency of the American College of Surgeons. The Fellows of the College settled down to a hard week's round of lectures, conferences, clinics and surmises, which President Haggard's further rhapsody on Women lightened. Cried Dr. Haggard, who has lived in Nashville, Tenn. most of his 61 years:* "The Apollo Belvedere,'with its magnificent forehead calm as Heaven, rises above eyes that follow the shaft he has sped. 'And the cold marble leaped to life a god.' Contrast the Belvedere with the Venus de Milo, the very eidolon of the female form, the Queen of the Loves; the head too small for great intellect but big enough for the greatest love. . . . "Surgery has created its greatest endeavors for woman--the Caesarean section for her unbornable child. McDowell invoked the bold invasion of the abdominal cavity for the removal of the great new growths that made for women untimely graves. This presaged all of the marvelous surgery of the peritoneal interior. It is vision commanded by courage that sails into the domain of curative surgery. The art and genius of J. Marion Sims with the silver-wire suture made lacerated woman whole. The victim of vesicovaginal fistula was no longer a prisoner in her own house. She is rescued from her wretchedness by the most deli cate skill and the gentlest artisanship." Drs. Charles Horace Mayo of Roches ter, Minn, and George Washington Crile were two others who boldly digressed from the strict business of surgery. Mayo on War. Dr. Mayo, who alternated with his elder brother Dr. William James Mayo as chief surgical consultant to the U. S. Army Medical Department during the War, who won the Distinguished Service Medal and is a brigadier general in the Medical Officers' Reserve Corps, was thinking last week that war again was imminent over Europe Cried he, speaking before the Chicago Association of Commerce: "The speed of the world has increased so fast that a lot of people can't keep up. Their training and vision are still those of the horse age. Now the Government is send ing fine stallions out to the western plains to breed horses for the cavalry. You might as well go to war in a horse and buggy. This is a machine age, and war hereafter will be waged by technical men. We are spending a quarter of a billion dollars for warships which will be obsolete in ten years. No class A countries will ever fight another war with massed men. It will be too expensive. The world must be ready for a quick jump. Planes will drop explosives, gas, and disease. Their maxim will be, 'Jump in and destroy as quickly as you can.' " Dr. Crile on Glands. Medicine is cautiously probing at life, health and disease with the newest tools of chemist and physicist. In England Dr. James Eustace Radclyffe McDonagh, whose studies are gradually becoming known in the U. S., is using colloid chemistry, including the physicochemical action of the electrical charges on colloid particles. In the U. S. Dr. Crile applies electronic interpretations. Dr. Crile last week boldly predicted that during the coming century "the state of activity ... of the body [will be measured by] the relative percentages of the different parts of the [electromagnetic] spectrum emitted by different parts of the body." More within the compass of everyday medical thought was another physiological complex which Dr. Crile described last week. The thyroid, he argued, is a power-house for the body; the sympathetic nervous system carries the power impulses throughout the body; the adrenal glands control the power; and the frontal lobe of the brain, seat of intelligence, is the driver. The tempo of modern life causes the frontal lobe to drive the adrenals at too fast a pace. The adrenals overwork, and cause the thyroid to lose more power than the body can stand. Follows goiter, diabetes, peptic ulcer, heart ailments. Reasoned Dr. Crile, "If this interpretation is correct, then this entire group of neurogenic diseases should be abated or cured by removal of the thyroid, when the disease is in the thyroid group; by denervation of the adrenals when the disease is in other groups, while in a small group both thyroid-removal and adrenal-denervation should abate or cure the disease. That this is the case is now established." Factory Medical Code. The surgeons are trying to put through an NRA code which will require all employers of labor to have their employes given a medical examination by hired company doctors. Every factory must contribute to the support of pathological and x-ray laboratories, intend the surgeons. They ''insist that industry utilize hospitals which are equipped with proper facilities and standardized." Factory "laboratories should be available to the family physician for service to the family of the employe." Figures presented to indicate the extent of the field of factory medicine: 3,000,000 "lost time injuries," 25,000 deaths, 87,000,000 minor injuries, from industrial accidents yearly. Cost: $5,000,000,000 a year. "Cancer is Curable." During the past two years Fellows of the College of Surgeons, at the insistence of Dr. Franklin H. Martin, an organizer of the College* have been keeping track of cases of cancer which have remained cured for five years or longer. Last week the surgeons reported a total of 24,448 five-year cures. Of the total 7,990 have been cancer of the womb, 8,051 cancer of the breast, 1,506 cancer of the mouth and lip, 1,124 cancer of the skin, 2,067 cancer of the colon and rectum. The knife, x-ray and radium effected these cures because the patients reported and their physicians recognized the cancers before much destruction had occurred. This was the point which the surgeons wanted impressed on everyone. Dr. Robert Battey Greenough of Boston, who later in the week was elected 1934 president of the College, presided over the symposium on cancer, in which 30 eminent surgeons shared. One of the best attention-holders was Dr. Robert Calvin Coffey of Portland.* Ore., a swarthy, beetling man who was called upon to describe his famed system of draining the kidneys through the intestines in cases where the bladder is diseased. Dr. Coffey also described his system of "surgical quarantine." When he operates on a diseased abdomen he blocks off healthy organs with sheets of rubber and packs cotton wicks into the hollows left by organs removed. As the patient's insides heal and connective tissues fill in the cavities, Dr. Coffey hauls out the wicks one by one. His method helps insure against peritonitis. Appendicitis. Mortality from appendicitis is 50% higher today than it was 15 years ago, deplored Professor Alton Ochsner of New Orleans. One person dies in the U. S. every 29 minutes from appendicitis. Before the age of 50 four times as many people die from appendicitis as die from cancer. Ages 10 to 30 are the appendicitis years, 70% of cases occurring in that range. Added Dr. John T. Moore of Houston, "Many times a patient with an acute attack might get over it, if nothing were given in the way of a purgative."

*Of Nashville and Vanderbilt University too is Professor Eugene Lindsay Bishop, 47, last week at Indianapolis elected 1914 president of the American Public Health Association. *Recently published is Surgeon Martin's two-volume autobiography, The Joy oj Living (Doubleday, Doran $7), which yields flashing glimpses of the important surgeons of the past half century. *No kin of Dr. Walter Bernard Coffey of San Francisco who still claims to be alleviating hopeless cancer with adrenal cortex extracts (TIME, Nov. 23, 1931 et ante).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.