Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1899 — Recovery from Appendicitis. [ARTICLE]

Recovery from Appendicitis.

It is stated In the New York Medical Journal that surgeons admit that 75 per cent of all cases of appendicitis will recover without operation, but that they claim that 98 per cent could be saved by operating promptly on every vase as soon as discovered. This discloses a debate of great significance. A contributor to that journal says: “It la estimated that there are 200,000 new cases of appendicitis discovered each year in the tJnited States. If this is true and the surgeons are right 46,000 of them would be ruthlessly sacrificed under medical treatment. But physicians assert that autopsies upon subjects that have died from other diseases than appendicitis show old inflammatory processes about the appendix In one-third of the cases, just as old tuberculous cicatrices are found in the lungs where tuberculosis has never been suspected. In other words, one-third of all coming to the autopsy table, and by Inference a large proportion of the population, have gotten well spontaneously from an unsuspected trouble which would have sObjected them to a lifeendangering operation had they fallen into the hands of a surgeon of sufficient skill to make the diagnosis.