T. B. Medalist

Meeting in New Orleans last week, the National Tuberculosis Association, a high-powered money-collecting organization whose publicity has done much to reduce tuberculosis deaths in the U. S. to 70,000 a year, announced that it was giving its Trudeau Medal to Dr. Edward William Archibald, Montreal lung surgeon. He had been recommended for this honor by Dr. Lawrason Brown of Saranac Lake, N. Y., centre for tuberculosis treatment. But to very few of the U. S, anti-tuberculosis enthusiasts in New Orleans last week was able Dr. Archibald more than a name.

Even the notice of Dr. Archibald's kudos was erroneous. Said his citation: "His work led to the introduction of thoracoplasty in America. He performed the first operation in 1912 and, by writing and speaking before organizations, he helped to spread the method throughout this country." According to the late Dr. Fielding Hudson Garrison's impeccable History of Medicine: "Dr. George Ryerson Fowler (1848-1906) first performed thoracoplasty in 1893." Thoracoplasty consists of removing parts of ribs along the spine, on the side of the diseased lung. The ribs then collapse like slats into the chest cavity, preventing the diseased lung from expanding and thereby exerting itself. This rest enables the lung to confine the invading germs of tuberculosis while the other lung, with no appreciable inconvenience, takes up a double burden for the rest of the patient's life. Thoracoplasty is not to be confused with artificial pneumothorax or with phrenicotomy, other efficient and less drastic methods of resting a tuberculous lung. In artificial pneumothorax a hollow needle is inserted between two ribs. Air is pumped into the pleural cavity of the affected side until pressure prevents the lung from expanding. Nor can a diseased lung expand when nerves which control that side of the diaphragm are cut (phrenicotomy). Although little known at New Orleans last week, Dr. Archibald, 63, is famed among lung specialists. He has been director of McGill University's department of surgery for 28 years. His deep interest in tuberculosis began in 1902 when he developed the disease and went to Saranac Lake, where he was soon cured without surgery by Dr. Lawrason Brown, his nominator last week.

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