Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1907-07-14
Appendicitis
 Bows to Science
Continued from Page Two.)

| he should. Usually 1t is still pOSSi- ble to save him, but now and again it is found that the disturbance in his appendix has spread, and he is beyond all aid, medical or surgical.
 Medical treatment of appedicitis at best is inexact and hazardous No known drug is capable of going to a patients diseased appendix and killing the germs therein and no known course of treatment is capable of insuring him absolutely against attacks in future.. Opium it is true, may relieve his pain, but it is obvious that relieveing his pain does not mean removing it's source. Whenever complete re- covery is witnessed without opera tion it is nature that cures.
 It is far better when there is good ground for believeing that ap. pendicitis exists to run the risks of operation than to run the risks of peritonitis. -~s-W-w3W
 'So impressed am I,'' says Ir. Osler, "that we physicians lose lives by temproizing with certain eases of appendicitis that prefer in hospital work to have suspected cases admitted directly to the sur gical side"
 In that variety of the diseases marked by regular occurrences of slight attacks it is the better part of valor for the patient to go to hospital during an interval between them, and So have his cantankerous appendix cut out under the best possible conditions.
 Such at least is the opinon of the majority of the worlds most eminent physician-American, En- glish, German and French-today. But it must be said ill all fairness that there is also a respectable mi nority which holds that surgery is resorted to with too great frequency l and that nature and proper nurse ing are capable of curing large pro- portion of cases. Professor Dleulafoy, Frenchman, insists that operations 1 for appendicitis are often performed upon people who are really in the first stages of typhoid fever or have noth- ing worse than a simple collie. Doyen and other dissenters make even more serious allegations.
 Wanted to Keep Appendix.
 This recalls the story of the Amer ican who was subject to fits and fear ed that while unconscious he would be hustled to the hospital and relieved of his appendix. To guard himself against this he carried in his pocket paper reading: eff I am picked up on the street, please don't cut out my appendix; it has been removed twice already"
 Another American, after recovering from an operation for appendicitis, had the following tattooed over the scar: Keep out; there's nothing in- side
 Those who oppose surgical inter- ference base their chief argument up- on the fact that appendicitis is a self limiting and self-curing disease. The leucocytes of the blood, as we have seen, engage in battle with the germs in the appendix as soon as they appear and under proper conditions this battle is likely to be successful.
 In such cases the patients pain lessens, his temperature falls, his nausea disappears, and in sh2it while he is we'll again. Sometimes the germs are wiped out entirely; at other times they spread themselve; in forming some sort of a tumor which in the course of time will b: absorbed. But it is plain that maa who has once had appendicitis has proved that his appendix is liable te the diease, and that in consequence his chances of having it again arc above the average. The only man who is certainly protected against it is hf who has lost his appendix.
 When the leucocytes are defeated in thair hatt1o and fhnra is no Surpjca interference the diseased appendix be comes more and more inflamed ant the number of germs in it increase enormously Finally they breal through it's walls and are scattered broadcast through the abdominal cav
 ity. Here they find immediate lodg
 ment in the peritonem, the thin mem
 brane which incloses, like bag, tn