Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1907-07-14
APPENDICITIS
 BOWS ID SCIENCE Great Majority of Cases if Taken in Time Can Be Corrected by Surgeons No Specific Germ. MARKS THE DISEASE Symptoms Are Always the Same and Can Be Discovered Easily by the LAyman-Germs Spread Very Rapidly.
MARKS THE DISEASE

OQOO t1S all 4uVSOtAOA VI SAV NoSsOA - -as mere figment of the profess ional imagination-but in truth it Is a very real and serious disorder.
 Three factors have combined to increase it's apparent occurrence. ln the first place, medicine has made great advances in exactness during the last twenty years and many dis orders formerly attributed vaguely as collie and bowel trouble are now placed under the head of appendi- citis. In the second, there is a reason to believe that the disease is actual ly more prevalent than it used to be, and that the spread of influenza is in some way to blame for this.
 In the third place, the wide spread interest in appendicitis has caused a great many persons to pro- duce it symptoms or simplations of it's symptoms in themselves by efforts of imagination. Some of the persons who thus fancy that they have the malady without really hav- ing it are actually inspired by nothing more than desire to be in the fashion; others are victims of hysteria, a strange disorder which usually masquerades as other disorders; others suffer from ail- ments approximating more or less the characteristic of true appendi- citis.
 As everyone knows, appendicitis is an inflammation of the ueer little sac called the vermiform appendix. This sac, which is about the size and shape of glove finger, has no apparent use, and as most anato- mists agree that it is nothing but surviving stump or root of some forgotten organ that man at some early period of his development found useful. It makes off from a part of the intestines, and lies on the right side.
 So long as it remains empty and healthy it is unobfrusive and harm less. But so soon as it fills up witA poisons, germs, grape seeds and other things of that. sort and be- gins to swell and fester it becomes a source of danger and possible cause of death.
 No Specific Germ.
 Appendicitis is germ disease but, unlike diptheria, typhoid fever and measles, 1t has no specific germ of its own. Almost any ma- lignant microbe, in fact, may cause 1t. When a man has rheumatic fe- yer, for example, some of the stray germs of that disease may wander into his appendix set up an Inflammation and kill him. Again the same thing may be done by the germs of typhoid fever, commo boils or influenza. The last named disease has been shown to be a precursor of appendicitis and there is good reasons to believe, as has been stated, that the recent epidemics sof influenza have caused the parallel epidemics of trouble in the veriform appendicitis.
 Very often the disturbance that the invading germs cause in the ap- pendix is very slight. In such cases nothing serious happens and the patient commonly gets well again without Rowing that he was ill. But at other times the disturbance is greater and lasts longer and the re- suit is appendicitis in one of it's more familiar forms.
 Even when the number of germs in the appendix is enormous and the resultant inflammation and suppur- ation have gone very far the germ killing leucocytes of the blood keep up a terrible battle with the invad- Y CTS. Tn an otherwise healthy man this battle is apt to be successful, but there is always the chance that the leucocytes may lose and that the germs will spread from the ap- pendix to the abdominal cavity in general and thereby cause death by pe4.tonitis.
 RecOyerieS Predominate N Therefore it is the custom of phy sf