Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1889 — A DELICATE OPERATION. [ARTICLE]

A DELICATE OPERATION.

A—rl*sa •arcooaa AMosapliah What Xaalteh Owes Batea* to Try. One of the moat delicate surgical operations of the past few yean was that of a well-known young fellow on whose face had grown a huge goatee like excrescence. disfiguring him frightfully, causing him great inconvenience, and at last becoming positively dangerous to his health. At last one of New York's big surgeons undertook to remove it Two operations were necessary, with a long interval between them. The surgeon and his chief assistant performed them, 'and the ’ fees, in popular report, ranged from SIO,OOO to SIOO,OOO for the chief, and from $5,000 to $50,000 for the assistant. Yet even the larger amounts would not have reimbursed them 'for the study necessary in fitting themselves to do the ofieration. As the darky explained to his master, “I done chahge you fifty con’s fer killin’ de cahf, sah, an* one dollah fer de know-how.” It's the cost of acquiring the "know-how” that keeps many young doctors on the medical side of their profession. In connection with this case, it may be said that it was a great triumph for American surgery. TJre young man bad applied to all the best surgeons in Great Britain and Europe, and from each of them he heard his death sentence: “Wo can’t operate. Any operation will merely kill you more quickly than the growth Itself. Go home, put your affairs in order, and live as long as you can.” He did live ns long ashe could; he is living now; and that he isiaalwe-ttHhecourage of an AjjxcweinrSurgeon in a crisis before which "foreigners sat helpless. A similar triumph was that won by a distinguished alienist of Philadelphia. The head of one of the largest insane asylums of this country, desirous of studying the most approved methods of treating the insane, went abroad to visit the foreign hospitals. He called on one of the greatest European specialists, and explained his intentions. "My dear sir,” said the Frenchman, "go home; go home and go to the Philadelphia hospital; there you will find a man who knows more than any of us, whose methods are perfect, whom we all study and reverence.” The American went home and learned that the Frenchman was right.