184 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



play with the intestines at will, opening them for foreign 

 bodies and for drainage of the contents, removing what 

 we wish, anastomosing them and short circuiting their 

 contents. Tumors of the liver unless malignant are ex- 

 tirpated with a very low mortality and wounds of its 

 substance are treated with success ; gall stones and gall 

 bladders are removed every day; the spleen is anchored, 

 sutured or removed as we find best; the pancreas is no 

 longer inaccessible; the kidney and the ureter, like the 

 stomach, have their own lists of operations far too long 

 to rehearse. 



In the pelvis the bladder is opened and partly or even 

 wholly extirpated ; the prostate removed ; the uterus, the 

 ovary, the tubes, the parovaria have a long list of life- 

 saving, comfort-giving operations to their credit. 



We suture and anastomose nerves ; we suture and anas- 

 tomose blood vessels even in the new-born, we criss-cross 

 the circulating blood to prevent gangrene, and endo- 

 aneurismorrhaphy has practically banished the Hunterian 

 operation for aneurism and saved many a limb and life. 

 We transplant skin and bones and joints, and even half 

 joints, with success. To all these we have added the 

 X-rays, the serum and vaccine treatment of many surgi- 

 cal disorders and are gradually throttling disease, some- 

 times at its very birth. 



It almost takes one's breath away ! Yet it is an incom- 

 plete and ever-lengthening list ! As Mumford 20 well 

 says: 



Daring has become conservatism ; rashness has be- 

 come common sense. 



Practically our ability to do all these life-saving opera- 

 tions is the result of the researches, the experiments, and 

 the achievements of Lister and his followers. Had anti- 

 sepsis not made all operations, including the opening of 

 the head, the chest, the abdomen, and the pelvis, safe, we 



20 Keen's Surgery, I., p. 76. 



