Operation, March 14, 1872: Published in New York Medical Journal of May, 1873; the sac was previously exhibited to the New York Pathological Society.

The patient was a beautiful young lady of Gates county, North Carolina. Dr. John C. Goodman of Nansemond county, Virginia, now of Tifton, Georgia, accompanied her to New York City, to advise with me. It was arranged that the writer should go to her home in North Carolina and do the operation.

Present and assisting were Dr. Goodman, Dr. P. B. Baker of Suffolk, Virginia, and Dr. Joseph Boykin Whitehead of Norfolk, Virginia (brother of the operator). Drs. Henry A. Morgan, Elisha Williams and Henry Riddick of Gates county, North Carolina, also were invited by Dr. Goodman. The operator made as small an abdominal cut as possible (31⁄2 to 4 inches long), drew off sixteen quarts of fluid from the sac, which, with the fluid, weighed thirty pounds; applied a double silk ligature to the pedicle, cut it, dropped it back into the abdomen, and closed the wound with silver wire sutures. The patient made a good recovery, married, and afterward lived for many years.

Ovariotomy is an American operation, first successfully done by Dr. Ephriam McDowell of Kentucky, in 1809. He had nine successes out of fourteen cases, and this was long before the days of antiseptic surgery.

The following may interest you, fellow members of the Colorado State Medical Society, as a bit of light surgical literature:

There is a side-light to be thrown on the case just cited, not heretofore inentioned. Perhaps, it may be of interest to turn on this light athwart the events that attended the course of this case, to show one of the perils of a patient, and the trials that may sometimes beset a doctor.

It seems, a talkative country doctor, who was not asked to be present at the operation, made the following remark before a number of people: "Well," said he, "she was operated, on Tuesday!" "She will be buried next Friday!" This solemn declaration, made in the village store in Somerton near by, produced a profound impression on the villagers.

About a week after the operation, the surgeon having remained with his patient almost constantly at her home in the country where he attended her, visited the village of Somerton in Nansemond county, just across the state line between Virginia and North Carolina.

He met two or three old acquaintances, but there was a marked reserve about the people he met in fact, at a little distance away they scanned him curiously, and somewhat, he thought, in an unfriendly manner, as they would a murderer. Evidently the remark of the country doctor, of which he then knew nothing, had produced its effect. The beautiful "atient had passed the fatal Friday, but the impression that she would die was a fixed conviction in the minds of the village and country people.

Her attendant returns to her home and finds members of the family and others assembled at prayer in her chamber, the preacher and all the

others on their knees, the patient collapsed, almost pulseless, evidently resigned to die, her hands clasped over her breast, and about dying. The attendant looks at her anxiously; instantly comprehends the situation, and breaks up that assembly at prayer with some abruptness, but with no irreverent spirit. He puts everyone to doing something, partly to get rid of most of them, partly to help him. A poor white woman of the neighborhood, who is employed to nurse his patient, he retains with him. Of the others, he sends one for bottles of hot water, another for hot ironing irons, or for anything hot to wrap up and put to her body; another he dispatches for a mustard plaster, and one for this thing, and another for that.

The good pastor shrinks away unperceived. Her attendant gets her to swallow a few teaspoonfuls, at a time, of a mixture of aromatic spirits of ammonia, brandy and hot water. This is kept up, while a little vigorous rubbing of her limbs is tried with good effect by willing helpers. In a few minutes the blood returns to her lips, to her cheeks, and a little animation beams from her eyes. She looks at her attendant as if wishing to say: "Doctor, am I going to die?". He says to her: "No! you are not going to die; you are only frightened; you are doing very well." The kind nurse is a quiet, thoughtful middle-aged woman, very poor and apparently very needy. She is thinly clad in a cheap, much-worn calico dress during the damp, chilly, blustering month of March. She is specially employed by the wellto-do family for the occasion, is not a professional nurse. She is, however, attentive, willing and intelligent, but the solemn presage of death that the assembling for prayer in the presence of the young lady foretokens, causes the nurse to lose all hope for her. The attendant takes the nurse aside and talks to her earnestly, and reassures her. He regains her confidence, so that he believes she will watch his patient vigilantly and hopefully while he is away or asleep. Besides, he puts a ten-dollar bill in her hand and begs her to accept it. She at first declines, but he urges her, tells her she needs it; to take it for his sake, as a thankful requital from him of her good services to his patient. Finally the good nurse accepts this money, possibly, more than she at one time has possessed for a great while.

It should be remembered that, at that time, many of the people of the impoverished South had not yet recovered from the extreme distresses and privations occasioned by our civil war.

When the dangers most to be feared had about passed away the operator left the case to the watchful care of Dr. Goodman, and returned to his practice in New York. She made a slow, but good recovery.

Many a hard-working, faithful doctor, probably, has his troubles, and his trials that he bravely faces, as he should, and gets his most satisfactory wages, sometimes, in the happiness that his good work brings to him.

EXHIBIT EIGHT.

HIP-JOINT EXSECTION.

The opening paragraph of an article by the writer on hip-joint exsection, published in the Medical Record, December 18, 1886,* is substantially as follows:

"In the present state of opinion, generally, among medical men concerning the results of the treatment of hip-joint disease, no excuse need be made for reporting the following cases. The writer is still further strengthened in this course by the encouraging words of an eminent surgeon, perhaps the highest authority on orthopedic surgery, who, on having received from him the photographs of a case of hip-joint excision, replied as follows:

"285 Fifth Avenue, New York, Oct. 5, 1886.

"MY DEAR DR. WHITEHEAD-Many thanks for your beautiful photographs of exsected hip; they are really magnificent, and make me feel happy to think that I have done some good in the world by propagating an idea that is yielding such splendid results. In the face of such a case as this of yours and some fifty more almost like it that I can show, how can men be so blind as not to admit the utility, in fact the necessity, of such an operation? Let us live in hope that the scales may some day fall from their eyes. I congratulate you heartily, and wish you a continued success.

The case alluded to by Dr. Sayre is here very briefly stated. The condition of this patient was shown six months after the operation, as seen in the accompanying figures of this exhibit.

This brave, manly little fellow, then II years old, is now a man plying his vocation of printer, with good use of his limb, and with about only one inch of shortening, corrected with a thick sole to his shoe, after a resection of four and one-eighth inches of bone. The bone sheath, or periosteum, which possesses the property to reproduce new bone, was much thickened; it was carefully preserved by what is called a sub-periostial excision of the head and neck of the diseased thigh bone at the hip-joint; all portions of diseased bone were removed after successive cuts until healthy bone was reached, as shown in the accompanying figure.

*This article is entitled: "Notes of some recent cases of Hip Joint Disease, including two cases of Excision, and one of Brisement Force, with Remarks on some others."

The half-tone figures of this boy, Freddie H. of Denver, operated March 13, 1886, are copied from the photographs alluded to by Dr. Sayre, made by Rinehart of Denver.

Small wood cuts of them appear in the Medical Record. For further details of this case and others, see this journal, October 18, 1886.