SURGERY, IMPROVEMENT IN
Within our own time, another great man of the Washington type, Count Cavour, has been slain by medical bleeding precisely as Washington was. The worse Cavour grew, the more his doctors bled him, and he finally succumbed under the treatment, in the flower of his age and in the midst of his usefulness. It is, therefore, not unfair to conclude that the final cessation of a practise so barbarous, so opposed to common sense, has been due to the increase of physiological knowledge and to that increased reliance on nature and careful nursing, and diminished reliance on “physic,” which is the result of this knowledge, and that its continuance in any country is simply a sign of a low condition of medical research. The advance in conservative surgery has been simply enormous. The great operations have been robbed of their terrors, and with their terrors of much of their danger, and nothing has made more progress than contrivances for preventing the loss of blood. In fact, in the practise of to-day there is nothing of which so much care is taken as of the patient’s blood. Not only is he left in possession of all he has already got, but every pains is taken to increase his supply of it. Nobody “lets blood” now but assassins, and “toughs” and suicides—a curious sign of progress, but a sign of progress it is.—New York Evening Post.
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SURGERY IN KOREA
Medical science in Korea is wofully deficient. Native doctors have but two instruments—a little flat knife-blade and a long, sharp knitting-needle-like instrument. The former is used for bleeding or scraping, and the latter for plunging into the body to make an exit for the disease devil. It is always surgically dirty and a joint is a favorite place for its insertion. Septic conditions arise which render the joints permanently immovable. Medical missionaries are continually called upon to give aid to children of from eight to twelve years of age with stiffened knees or elbows.
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SURPRIZES IN BOOKS
There are the “pleasant surprizes” of publishing—books undertaken with the expectation of about paying expenses that have soared away to the hundred-thousand mark. Others are “undertaken because they are known to be works of great merit, and while the publisher may not have much hope of a satisfactory result, there is a chance that the merit of the book may in time make an impression on the public.” Then there are those undertaken because “they strike a new note in literature, which may receive the appreciation of the public.” “David Harum” is called “the greatest surprize.” Seven or eight publishers had declined the book, and only two persons in the house accepting it had much hope that it would pay expenses. For six months after publication a few thousand copies were disposed of; its ultimate sale was nearly a million.—Appleton’s Magazine.
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Surrender, Total—See [Reservation].