84 patients were admitted for surgery that year. Eighteen different kinds of surgery were performed, with appendectomy the most frequent with seven cases. During an appendectomy, the surgeon removes the appendix, the small, finger-shaped organ, branching off the large intestine. The appendix has no known function, but it can become infected. If the inflammation continues untreated, the appendix may become perforated, spilling its contents into the abdomen.
Death can result.
Surgery to remove an infected appendix was first done in Boston about 13 years before Mary Washington Hospital opened. Few Mary Washington records exist for the early days of the hospital, but it was common practice then for the surgeon to remove the appendix through a 3-inch incision in the lower abdomen. The surgeon would not have used antibiotics or diagnostic X rays. Alexander Fleming s discovery of antibiotics was still almost 30 years away, and William Roentgen had first used X rays only three years earlier. For anesthesia, the surgeon or one of his assistants would have dripped ether on a gauze mask over the patient s face.