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4 • I 344 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS If the operative procedure required opening the abdominal cavity or the chest cavity or much work within the cranial cav- ity, the surgeon very wisely left it undone. The hazards were too great to commend such procedures to men of good judg- ment. The man who contracted appendicitis must die unless nature was able to wall off the pus sac and thus save him. When the pus cavities were walled off the man was saved by nature, not by the attending surgeon. If there was an in- testinal stricture or strangulation or perforation the person affected had to accept his outlook in a fatalistic spirit. How- ever much he pleaded with his surgeon for help his plea was unheeded. The surgeon dared not open up the abdominal cavity and subject it to infection. In heart and lung diseases the possibility of interference was even less. A pleura full of fluid might be drained or opened but not unless such conditions had arisen as made the operation one potentially on the outside of the chest cavity rather than within it. It is true that operations were done on the structures within the skull but they were not done except where some perforating wound or some infection had made the operation one of necessity rather than of choice. And probably this expression — ** operations were of necessity*' — describes the situation as well as it could be done in pages of type. When Virchow had laid down the laws of disease as such, the solid basis of fact; and Koch had developed bacteriology; when Lister had developed Koch's science and from it a sci- ence of antisepsis and asepsis and then had popularized it — the time had come to launch a new era of surgery. Theoretically, it was now safe to go into the body cavities. It was no longer good judgment to limit surgery to the arms, legs and neck. But men were timid. Some dared but many halted. They said asepsis might not work practically. The theory might be wrong. Daring was required. The daring required came naturally from America. The combination of daring, courage, common sense, and judgment was such as the American life of opportunity would develop in choice spirits. It was at this point that the surgeons of America began to be
