The age-herald., 1900-06-03
HOW TO GET RID OF
 DREAD APPENDICITIS

'I read an article in last Sundays New York Sun on appendicitis, said we'll known official of a southern railway. And as one having authority on the subject want to make few remarks. I know what I am talking about, for have been there. had appendicitis, had an opera tion performed for the removal of the alarmed thing that does it, and now I am as fit as fiddle. It happened about five years ago when business had me on the road pretty much all the time. For a year or so I had a pain that I thought was collie or something of that kind, but it did not bother me a great deal for sev- eral months. Then it became worse and laid me up once or twice, for three or four days. One time it caught me at the office and I had to go home in a carriage Still the doctors that I mentioned the matter to and the one who attended me the day I was taken in the office did not say any thing about appendicitis. The first one who ventured to say he thought it might be that disease was a Detroit doctor who came to see me when I was taken with it there once. After he had suggested 1t to me- l began to think that was what was the matter and finally made up my mind to it.
 "One morning I had left Washington to come over to New York, and at Baltimore the thing caught me and began to hurt like the very dickens. Just as soon as the train stopped I went right up to a lead- ing physician in one of the hospitals there and stated my case. He told me positively that I had appendicitis, and the only way that I had appendicitis, and the only way tion. He said I might live five or six years longer with it as it was, and I might be caught some time on train and be dead before anything could be done for me- However it might happen, l was sure to be a dead man within a half dozen years.
 1T asked him what the chances were for recovery, telling him that had wife and family dependent upon me, and would he advise me to take the risk. He said the chances were all in my favor my general health being good, and that once recovered I could go on being a bread-winner for a good many years. Having settled that part, l asked him what he would charge. He said he had been paid as high as 5000 for an operation, whereupon l told him I guessed l would have to go without one, when he asked me what my salary was, as had told him the place I occupied told him $2, 400 a year. and he asked if thought 10 per cent. of that was more than I could afford, and I said it was not, and so we agreed upon $240 as his fee. He gave me something to ease the pain, and told me the quicker the operation was performed the better, and I said I would go back homo and put things in shape and be with him the next day. But I did not go home; only went to Washington, where made a will, put my affairs in shape, told my office people where was going, and sent word to my wife that I was called away on 0 longer trip than usual and might not be back for month.
 "The next day I went to the hospital, and I can tell you I did not like the idea of 1t little bit, for all the pain was gone, and I was never feeling better in my life. l remember as I went up to the door of the building taking a look back at the sunshine, the glad green world, and all that sort of thing, and cursing with all sincerity the existence of a vermiform appendix It was a good deal worse than going to have a tooth pulled after the blamed thing had quit hurting. But knew it would come back again, and gathered myself together and surrendered bodily to the authorities of the hospital.
 'T didn't feel any need ofsdoctors and hated like the deuce to take the medicine and treatment they prescribed as prepara- tory to the operation, but l made myself do It. and on the third morning after my arrival was ready for the knife. I was trained down to give myself a good low start so as to rise rapidly after the sur geons were through with me- and really I felt less like going into an operating room than did going out to slug match with the prize-ring champion. The nurse want cd to wheel me down to the room in one of these big wheel chairs, but I wouldn't have 1t at all ,and walked had on only . long robe like priest in his canonicals. There lay down on a cot to wait for the surgeons, and being unattended, and with