St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-06-26
SURGICAL SCIENCE.
Some OF the Many Wonderful
Cures Of the Present
Day.
Operations Undreamed OF
Twenty Years Ago Every
Day Occurrences Now.
Almost Anything Possible to
the Skillful Physician OF
To-Day.
What Surgery May Accom-
pliSh in the Future Can
not Be Estimated.

clans are simple. Inc pest meulcdI ShHl
of the last decade of the last half OF the
nineteenth century works miracles
with flesh ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS tissue.
That is to say, its achievements could
not have been explained or paralleled
by the profession or the public even
generation ago. Already hypnotism,
the mysterious science of subjugating
the will and mastering the sensations of
another, is being put to daily use in
Paris by eminent men, who find delicate
or painful operations most readily per-
formed on patients in the condition OF
the hyonotic trance. And that, too, be-
fore hypnotlsm is itself understood or
reduced to a scientific basis!
What surgery may not accomplish IN
the future no man dares say, IN tne
light of its achievements in the recent
mast. saws New York correspondent OF
The Boston Herald. DR.. W. w. Keen.
an eminent surgeon and medical au-
thority, says this progress Is due chiefly
to two things-"the introduction of
antiseptic methods and to what we have
learned from Laboratory work and eX-
periments upon animals"
''Antiseptic methods" says DR.. Keen,
are those that prevent inflammation
and suppuration, the septic" or
poinonous processes, which were the
bugbears of the old-school operator.
For Instance, fifty-four men or women
out of every hundred who had their
arms or legs cut off would die under the
old regime. Not more than four out OF
a hundred similar cases would result
fatally now with the antiseptic method.
of infQ0tinn the
greatest triumph the operator can hope
for. He sees in dirt-'surgical Dirt
his greatest foe, and guards his patient,
his instruments, his hands and his
whole surroundings against the slight
est contact with one of those marvel
lous little microbes of which people
hear so much nowadays. Prof. Grad
die, by the way, estimates that 100000
100000 of such microbes would weigh
less than grain. Yet a single one OF
them under favorable conditions will
increase so rapidly if unmolested that
in three days the aggregation OF
microbes would form mass weighing
800 tons! No wonder your surgeon
fights shy of such active little wonders.
Amputations in old times were nearly
always followed by surgical fever"
nowadays patient often doesn't miss
a meal or nights sleep, and rarely has
any fever at all" ''lf the antlseptlc
method of amputation had been in use
during the War of the Rebellion says
one of the most eminent authorities OF
this city. "the pension list would be at
least S50.000,000 greater year than IL is
nOw!" What frighttul loss. now con-
| sidered unnecessary. that implies!
But how hard the doctors are work
| ing and have worked to make things
| easy for suffering humanity! Lister
| had to 20 to France to vivisect animals,
use the antseptic bandages on them.
| and to discover the most marvellous
| achievement of the faculty in a cen
| turyl There is constant and vigilant
warfare in New York and most large
| American cities against the expert
ments in vivisection which are the
| greatest aids to the progress of surgery.
Extraordinary surgical operations are
now reported in the newspapers when
ever the facts are accessible, as mat
tiers of news. The human race is
looking on and applaudlng while med
ical men wrestle with disease and
defeat death. So great is public conf
| dence in the ability of the leaders III
American medicine that were it to be
announced on the authority of DR..
| Keen, Dull, LII. NIOoos III OOOoOiiS
| DIR. Park, DR.. Weir. DR.. Girdner Or Dr..
Savre that any one of these surgeons
had succeeded in retaining and preSery-
| ing life in an amputated head, or had
operated on man with broken heart
and sewed up-or even removed-tbe
| offending organ, many readers would
credit the statement at once.
The fact is that no organ in any p0r-
| ton of the human body is now safe
| from the surgeons knife. The brain
has so long by the surgical mind been
considered the last resort and inner
sanctuary of life that fractured skull
and an exposed brain were accepted as
necessarily meaning death, and such a
thing as cutting into and examining the
brain, or removing part of 1T, or wash
ing it out, or lifting a bullet from its
soft tissues was unheard OF.
But all that is changed now. Suppose
YOU fire ball into your brain, as Ernest
Schilling did at San Antonio, Tex, in
March. 1SS6-as plenty of people have
done since then, without fatal results,
nearer home. The 39-caliber pistol ball
lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain.
1t never caused him great inconven
fence, and after nine days in bed he got
I'D, went about his business, and for years
afterward lived apparently as we'll as
ever. Schilling's son, by singular CO.
incidence, fired ball into his brain a
wear or more after his fathers adven-
ture. He, too, recovered.
Perhaps YOU are quarryman, like
William Bell, of New Hampshire, who,
by the premature explosion of blast,
had drill driven through his head,
piercing his brain through and through.
You could not escape surgical science.
William Bell got well and went to
quarrying again with considerably less
brain and probably more sense. Henry
Gruber, Paterson saloOnkeeper, not
long ago fired two balls into his brain.
The next morning the doctors found
him sitting up and chatting and drink
ing beer with his friends. But come
nearer to the doors of the temples OF
surgery.
Up to 1885 laparotomy. or the opera
ton of cutting open the intestines for
the purpose of treating gunshOt wounds
IN the abdomen. had never been per-
formed i'm New York. The first opera
ton of the kind was done by DR.. Will
lam L. Bull OIL patient twenty-five
| years of age, seventeen hours after he
had received five wounds of the small
intestine Since that time the operation
has been performed 10 times, in ninety
four cases by American surgeons, with
a mortality of only rs per cent. The
number of surgeons who thus dared to
do what was considered fatal. until one
of them had succeeded, and so blaZed
the way for the others, was very great,
showing how closely the profession
watch the progress of their leaders. Yet
here were nearly forty lives absolutely
saved after the receipt of wounds that
scarcely more than five years since were
thought to defy the surgeons skill.
Sixty-eight American and sixteen for.
eign surgeons handled these ITO cases.
So what was so recently an impossi.
BILE is now possible, and perhaps a
probably successful operation.
But" as one of the famous New
York surgeons said to the writer a night
or two since, 1.-THE human liver has
never yet been cut out. That is one
impossible operation as surgical ex-
perience stands to-day.
"There has never been successful
operation in New York city for rupture
of the intestines caused by blows on the
abdomen, although two such cases have