6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and largely as its result, comes a striking improvement in practice. 

 And remember, that this is only the first fruit of a rich harvest for 

 future time, in all countries, in peace and in war. 



November 2d, of last year, a man was brought to the Chambers 

 Street Hospital, in New York, with a pistol-shot wound in the abdo- 

 men. Under careful antiseptic precautions, and following the indica- 

 tions of Parkes, the abdomen was opened by Dr. Bull,* coil after coil 

 of the intestines was drawn out, the bullet was found and removed, 

 and seven wounds of the intestines were successively discovered and 

 properly treated, and the patient made an uninterrupted recovery. A 

 recovery, after so many wounds, any one of which would necessarily 

 have been fatal under the old methods of treatment, shows that we 

 have now entered upon a proper and successful method of treatment 

 for such frightful accidents. 



This is but one of the remarkable achievements of late years in 

 abdominal surgery. The spleen has been removed, part of the stom- 

 ach has been cut out for cancer, part of the bladder has been dissected 

 away, the entire gall-bladder has been removed, and several inches of 

 the intestine have been cut out, all with the most remarkable success. 

 To all of these, experiments upon animals have either led the way, or 

 have taught us better methods. To recite each in detail would oc- 

 cupy too much time, but one illustration I must not omit, for the 

 improvement, produced by it and other experiments, affects every 

 abdominal operation. When I was a student, the peritoneum was 

 avoided by knife and needle wherever possible. After the death of 

 his fourth case of ovariotomy, Mr. (now Sir Spencer) "Wells, f in making 

 the post-mortem, was led to believe that the then received treatment 

 of the peritonaeum was incorrect, and that he ought to bring its sur- 

 faces in contact in order to obtain secure union. Accordingly, instead 

 of testing his ideas upon women, he experimented upon a few dogs, 

 and found that his suspicions were correct. Since then it has been 

 accepted as a cardinal point in all abdominal operations. Following 

 this came improvements in the ligatures used, in the method of treat- 

 ing the pedicle, in the use of antiseptics, etc., all more or less the 

 result of experiments upon animals, and what are the results ? Tak- 

 ing successive hundreds of cases, Sir Spencer Wells's percentage of 

 mortality has decreased steadily from thirty-four per cent to eleven 

 per cent. In 1,000 operations he has saved 7G9 women from the grave 

 and added a net gain of 17,880 years to human life, to say nothing of 

 the happiness of the thousands related to them by ties of friendship 

 and of blood a proud boast indeed ! 



Since then, others have reduced the percentage of deaths after 

 ovariotomy to three in the hundred ; and Martin, of Berlin, has lost 

 but one patient from blood-poisoning in his last 130 cases. 



* " Medical News," February 14, 18S5. 



f Wells, "Ovarian and Uterine Tumors;' 1982, p. 197. 



