Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-12-04
THE BLIND SAC
A Wonderful Discoyery-A New York
Surgeons Remarkable Feat.
The Seat of the Conscience Located-A scieB.
tific Triumph-Our Ideas of Right and
Wrong Intestinal.
copyrighted 1890 by the United Press.


For the Gazette.
The conscience, that still small voice j,
has always been of more interest to
meta ply sicians than to surgeons. Its
existence was recognized by the earliest
philosophers but even the most advanced
materielists of modern times have not
attempted to locate its habitation in
the human organism. That 1t is a part
of man g makeup has, in fact, been q
stumbling block TO the iconoclastic scien-
lists of our day. Between mat erialism
aud accepted truth the conscience stood
alone as barrier.
Now, however, this obstacle has been
removed and the materlalist stands for
the moment, triumphant. He has dis
covered that the conscience, like the
memory, is simply a combination of It's
sues. No greater victory was ever won
by the surgeons knife. The way of it
was this:
noted manipulation of the scalpel
began years ago to make close study of
the vermifOrm aspendsge, that SEEM
inglv useless portion OF our anatomy
known as ''the bind intestine Here
was n sac that seemed ordained by ma
ture for nothing but obstruction. If, in
N the course of the digestive process, a
seed or other hard substance left the
beaten track and dropped into the
.blind intestine the victim of such u
mishap was doomed to death. Neither
medicine nor surgery could save him.
Science asserted that this fatal sac was
wholly useless and simply menace to
human life. Our 'hero,' surgeon
whose name is worldrenowned, de-
termined to solve this ancient mystery.
He devoted years to the task, and finally
invented a method whereby the unlucky
wight who mad dared the infiammatory
wrath of the blind intestine might be
saved. His process consists in the skill
full manipulation Of the knife and the
excision of the offending sac. Many an
unhappy sufferer owes his life to this
brilliant triumph of surgical ingenuity.
After q time, the surgeon who had
achieved this great victory became i'm
pressed by certain suggestive fact. He
had made practice of following his pa
tients IN their respective careers after
they had recovered from the effects of
his nimble knife. To bis surprise he
found that the removal Of the vermiform
appendage had u marked influence upon
undergone the operation. After re-
peated experiments he came to the con-
cluslon that the seat of conscience lay in
the blind sac.
Such a startling deduction was, of
course. not to be accepted without con-
vincine proof. Our surgeon. therefore,
contided his theory to several colleagues,
and together they made close study of
rod nr Of hni~
first steps was to cut open the body of q
murderer, q man who had displayed in
his life and death o remarkable lack or
conscience. To their establishment they
found that the intestines were wholly de-
void of vermfform appendage.
OF course, they reasoned, this may
have been a coincidence. Our surgeon
smiled aud assured them that his theory
mittee cut open the body of man who
ference to the distinctions between right
and wrong. Again the surgeons failed
to find the blind sac.
There was enough in all this to arouse
the curiosity of those who had taken part
in the sutopsies. One of them, prac-
titioner who was noted for his conscien-
tiousuess, agreed to have his vermiform
appendage removed In order to prove
conclusively the truth or falsity of the
proposition under discussion. He en-
dured the operation with heroic calmness
and made a quick recovery. A few
weeks later he murdered his mother-in-
law in cold blood.
There is no longer shadow of doubt
that the seat Of the conscience il in the
vermiform appendage,
EpAwRD s. VAN zux.