The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-03-04
SURGERY OF THE STOMACH.
How New York Physicians Regard Schlatters Opera
tons.

methods of joining intestine and stom-
ach after part of the latter has been
excised, most Of which are too technical
to be described popularity Schlatters
method of connecting the aesophagal
tube direct with the intestine after
removing the stomach completely, is
the browning achievement of his opera
ton. Taking the intestine precisely at
its right fold, he fastened the two to-
gether by a suture. q brilliant bit of
surgical work that required the greatest
technical skill for its accomplishment.
OF this operation and its conse-
quences, DR.. George f. Shrady, the
editor of the Medical Record. and a
surgeon of wide repute himself, says:
L am not speaking for myself but for
the profession. when l say that Schlat-
ter's operation is to be considered one
Of the greatest triumphs of modern
surgery. He has gone incontestably
further than any other man. and he has
done what no one else ever dared to do.
The operation and its results speak for
themselves; the woman operated upon
is living, and has lived for three
months. She is now in good health,
and without stomach can work The
food is, of course. trifle more careful
~ prepared than it would be ordinarily,
but she has no trouble in digesting,
and eats nearly what the other pa
tients in the hospital do Even if she
should die now. or later on, these facts
would net be altered. 1t has been
shown to be possible for a woman TO
live without a stomach"
DR.. Robert z. Weir takes a more
conservative view. Understand" he
says, Il am not undertaking or mini
MIXING the achievement of DR.. Schlat-
ter. 1t was a brilliant operation, and
will surely be attempted again and
again. Nothing like it has ever been
done before. 1t stands alone, and DR..
Schlatter, the young German, who is
as yet onl-' an assistant, should have
the fullest credit. But 1 do not see
that it has a future Not enough time
has elapsed yet to say whether the OPP
Grafton was really a success. We say
in cases of cancer that two years must
so by after an operation before its sue
cess can be determined. If the woman
lives that time, then the operation
will prove to have real and substan-
tial value
In Greig Smiths recent work on "Ab-
dominal Surgery" this passage on OPP
eratiOns of this sort occurs:
THE operation is a very fatal one.
Mlkulicz, of Cracow. collected SO cases,
of which only eight recovered from the
effects of the operation up TO the end
of 1887. Billroth is reported to have OPP
Grated is times, saving ten patients for
q longer or shorter time. The
most recent statistics are at once con-
Trajectory and unpromising. McArdIe
has collected records of 20 operations,
nine for simple structure, 60 for cancer.
OF the former, five recovered and three
died; of the latter, q died directly from
the operation, ii from Deritonitis of
septic absorption, and the remaining
q made good Tecoveries, many of them
being reported well four years after
operation. 1t is a pity that, in this
report, fuller details of the cases were
not given, for then it might have been
possible to explain the remarkable dis
crepancy with Bullins painstaking
studies. which seem to demonstrate
that thus far not one case of those
which recovered from the operation
can be claimed to have been really
cured of the disease
Yet another Interesting phase of this
subject is regarding the actual process
of digestion in a human being without
a stomach. The Starchy foods and the
fats. as long as has been known, are
digested mainly in the intestines, with
the aid of the pancreatic juice and
the bile. .Buttth albuminoids are di-
gested, as is also certain, in the stom-
ach, through pepsin excreted there, hy-
drochloric and Tactic acid. How does
nature do without these, as she is GER
tainly doing in the case of Schlatter's
Anna Lands? This is something that
scientists can not tell. In some wav.
evidently. nature can arrange and adj
just her problems.
Some very curious things can be told
in this regard. Artificial digestion in !
tubes has long been scientifically posi- |
BILE. The food is mixed with certain /
chemicals, and allowed to stand in !
these tubes until it has assumed a GER
tain form. Then it is fed to the patient |
There are several men in New York |
alone, one prominent man of affairs, |
daily seen on the streets, who take all |
their nourishment through tubes that |
lead directly into their intestines. That |
these people may get the qualification /
of taste as we'll as be nourished, they /
are furnished with outfits that lead di- |
rectly from their mouths to the tube |
communicating as described. They |
chew in the regular manner but the /
food, once masticated, passes down |
this artificial tube. one end of which is |
in their mouths.