The Ypsilanti daily press. (Ypsilanti, Mich.) 1928-1962, 1945-02-16
Your Health
Body Virtually
May be Turned
Inside Out

team in the days Of my youth when
vaudeville flOurished, for a final
curtain call, one member would
come IN the footliVhts and saw
Ladies and gentlemen. my part
ner will now turn himself inside
out to please-no mean feat" They
would then skip into the wings, so
/ never saw him do il.
But nowadays we can almost lit
orally do that with patients. At
least we can look in all the dark
recesses, eoigns and caves Of the
body, illuminate them with cleo
tricity and get an idea Of the gen
ersl situation. "
Special lnstrrment
or course we are long 81 NC
cUstomed to the oculist looEf0 ID
the back of the eye with an =
trio lighted instrument--the To-
kaleidoscope. And the ear specid
lst looking at the ear drum with
the otoscope. And the nose and
throat specialist looking into the
nose and at the vocal cords.
1t all seems so sensible and sim
pie that what we don't realize is
that these are relatively recent de-
Velopments in medicine, products
Of the nineteenth century. The
physicist-physician. Helmholz, in
1851. constructed a little mirror
with hole in the center which re-
fected light into the eye by which,
as he wrote, Il had the great Joy
of being the first TO see before me
living human retina,"
OtoscOpe Perfected
About the same time Politzer, Of
Vienna, following the work Of
Hoffman,, of Westphalia, so per-
fected the otoscope that he could
present the medical profession
with a series Of colored pictures of
the ear drum under all conceivable
conditions. In 1852, Manual Garcia,
. Spanish singing teacher, be-
came obsessed with the idea that
he wanted to see the vocal cords
directly in all stages of phonation.
He had vision as he was out
walking, Of a head mirror and a
little mirror on the end of a stick
which he could put in the throat,
and this gave him the inspiration
for the laryngoscope which he gen
erously presented to the medical
profession.
All the modern endoscopes by
which doctors can see into the
bronchial tubes, bladder, rectum,
peritoneum and stomach had to
wait on the invention Of the in
candescent light by Mr.. Edison.
They didn't wait long. Edison's
invention was completed in 1879
and by 1883 Newman, of Glasgow,
had cystoscope for looking inside
the bladder.
One of the most valuable Of
these endoscopes. the peritoneo-
scope, which looks directly into the
abdominal cavity, has been con-
siderably neglected. Surgeons in
general prefer to do what they call
an exploratory laparotomy. which
is real surgical opening into the
abdomen, TO see what is going on,
when the diagnosis is in doubt.
But | am told by those surgeons
who use the peritonecscope that il
gives them just as much informa.
ton with one-tenth Of the trouble
10 the patient
1t is not necessary to use a gen.
eral anaesthetic A local anaes-
thetic on the skin Of the abdomen
and the underlying muscles and
peritoneum when you get to them
is sufficient. Then a tiny incision,
half an inch long, is made and the
electric lighted tube is inserted so
that the stomach, gallbl adder, in
testines and other structures can
all be made out clearly. Its record
Of mistakes is quite low, compar-
ing favorably TO the more preten-
tious exploratory laparotomy.
The latest addition to this list is
the gastroscope, which is a flexible
tube provided with series of mir
rors. 1t is very thin and can be
slipped into the stomach with al
most no discomfort at all. wrote
week or two ago how the old dis
ease, gastritis, was coming pack
into fashion because the CASTRO
scope found so many examples in
people who had vague digestive
symptoms.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
7. P. H.:-Does coffee actually
keep a person awake nights II
taken just before bedtime?
Answer: 1t certainly does. Tha,
Is one Of its chief pharmacologi,
actions. But the heavy coffee
drinker gets an immunity in TINA
cate General Myron c. Cramer. on
death sentence, now reduced 10
five years imprisonr ent. OF pvt
Henry Weber for refusing to drill :
he Success NJ tho Army and the