Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1901-03-20
Plea for Conservative Surgery.

Great strides have been made in the
advance of surgery during the past
century in the advent of anaesthetics,
the improved technique of many opera
tions, an in the antsepctic discoveries.
until today the abdominal cavity, the
lungs-even the brain are operated
with impunity; the lacerated intestine
has been delicately and successfully re-
paired and a diseased stomach has been
removed and the patient recovered.
These startling successes have i'm
pressed the profession and public with
the Idea that there is no condition but
that may be remedied by an operation
and the advent of the twentieth CEN
tury may go down in history as the
Surgical Era. The few phenomenal
successes have so taken hold of the
profession as to cause these means of
relieving disease to be exaggerated
and the craze for operating carried to
the extreme, frequently overlooking
the Importance of medical Treatment
in their enthusiastic desire to add still
another disease to their domain and
accompanying laurels for their bold
and fearless labors. The fact that
very few of the so-called successful op
erations result in permanent cures,
that many must depend on after treat
ment to cure the trouble besides the
large numbers who die from the effectj
of the operation seems to be lost sight
of in ecstatic delight of a few brilliant
| cures. The physician who is ever
quick to advise operations for his pat
tents, is one whose skill in treatment is
questioned, and just as likely his dag
nostic ability would not bear close
scrutiny, but in the sanctity of the op-
| Grating room or the gloom of the grave
mistakes are easily covered up. That
| appendicitis should be considered a
strictly surgical case. and operated i'm
mediately, without even giving medi-
cal treatment an opportunity to con-
troll the disease, is altogether wrong,
for the majority of such cases can be
cured by proper treatment, and only
occasionally is it necessary to call in
| the aid of surgery. The successful
| physician who cures such cases is more
likely to be correct in his diagnosis
than the one who believes little in the
efficacy of remedies. make the
statement, based upon ten years of ex-
! perience and close study, that more
cases of this disease can be saved by
skillful treatment alone. than can be
done by operating in every case. What
the present century needs, in fact viii,
demand. is more skillful medical
/ specialists, who, while realizing the
value of surgery as an aid in treatment
will be slow to advise critical, danger
Gus operations till every possible medi-
cal means have failed, for it is evidence
of greater skill and merit to treat and
save a diseased part than it is to am
putate it, and is far more rational and
scientific to consider that disease can
best be treated by remedies to reach
the general constitutional condition
which is the cause of the local manifes-
tation, than to merely extirpate with
the knife the local effect. Unless con-
servative surgery very soon supercede
this mad operation craze, and the art
assume its proper place as merely ar
aid and secondary to medicine, 6
thinking and disguised public will gc
to the extreme of denying all surgiea
Interference. even in the few cases
where it might prove an aid to a pat
tents recovery.
A. H SWINBURNE. M. D..
Marietta, Ohio.
Wed March 13.-Dly & Wkly.