The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-12-21
NEW ACHIEVEMENTS
OF GREAT SURGEONS.
Operations That Almost Seem Incredible Now Sue
cessfuly Performed as Matter Of Course.
Most Recent Is the Work Of Dr. Karl Care Of Berlin in Which
Devoted Mother Gave Part Of Her Own Throat to Convert
Her Idiot Daughter Into Bright Little Girl.

New York.-Medical men here and
abroad are awaiting with considera-
BILE interest a report from Berlin CIV
ing complete details Of most daring
and unusual surgical operation per.
formed there few weeks ago.,
An idiot child, the six-year-old
daughter of Mrs. Louis Wolff, resi-.
dent of Berlin, has been converted
into an intelligent being by the proc
ess of grating part of the mothers
thyroid gland upon the child's pan
creas. Reduced to palmer language,
this means that part of the mothers
throat has been transferred by the
grating process to gland, or tissue,
lying directly at the back of the stom-
ach. By this operation the dull, in
active brain of little Lena Wolff has
been awakened so that it is now per-
forming the duties for which it was
intended.
This, in the history of medical
science, is without parallel, not only
because such an operation was never
attempted before, but also because
of it's seeming vagueness. The idea
of grating part of the throat of a
mother to the pancreas gland of her
child with the expectation of convert
ing the child from idiocy to a normal,
mental condition would seem at first
glance unworthy of serious consider
alton. But DR.. Karl Care, professor
of surgery in the medical faculty of
Breslau university, to whom the oper-
alton is credited, did exactly what has
been described above, and recent de-
spatches from Berlin declare that the
operation has been pronounced a COM
plete success.
Professor Care is an eminent Ger
man surgeon whose success in the
transplanting of organs from one ami
NAL to another and even from the
lower animals to human beings, has
attracted the attention and admira-
ton of surgical men all over the
world. When his report of how he
changed Lena Wolff from am idiot into
a bright and intelligent little girl is
completed it will form a valuable ad-
(lition to the list of modern miracles
of surgery.
An Idiot From Birth.
From the details of the case al
ready received from Germany it ap-
pears that Lena Wolff was born an
idiot six years ago, says the New
York World. Reason never dawned
for her as in other babies. She had
come into the world without one ap-
parent spark Of intelligence and
seemed doomed to pass her whole life
without knowing the joys and sorrows
of living
Her case was called to the attention
of Professor Care, who was inter-
ested from the very beginning, be-
cause in it he saw possibility Of be-
Ing able to prove the correctness of a
theory on which he had been at work.
This involved the probable action or
influence that certain substances or
secretions found in the ductless
glands of the human body have upon
the blood.
1t is the blood, as everybody knows,
that feeds the brain, keeping it active
and clear and in good working order.
If the blood is thin or sluggish the
brain is first to record that fact. The
great German surgeon knew that the