PLUCKY AMERICAN SURGEON

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 22

PLUCKY AMERICAN SURGEON

REMOVES OWN APPENDIX [FIIO-M Of 11 OwX CoUKKSi’OMIKNT.] SAN FRANCISCO, October LI. Los Angeles is living up to its notoriety tor the bizarre, the latest “stunt” being an operation performed on himself by a surgeon there. How he actually “ trained ” for weeks preparatory to the extraordinary operation of removing his own appendix was revealed by Dr Robert Meals, a modest, quiet-spoken young Hollywood surgeon, as he rested in a Los Angeles hospital well on his way to recovery. Happy over tlio successful on Iconic of his daring experiment, which lie made to confirm certain theories he, has long held, Dr Meals stated that within a few days bo would bo out of the hospital and back to practice. “I sought to prove that local rather than general anaesthesia is better for the patient in appendix operations, and .selected myself as a demonstration case,” he said cheerfully. “My auto-operation was not intended as a ‘stunt,’ and I regret that it, has come to public attention. Hut at tho same time I think I have proud my contention.” “For three years,” Dr Meals added, “I have been planning to do my own appendectomy. In when my appendix first bothered me, I told my friend and associate, Dr J. Norton Nicholas, that when the proper time came I would remove it myself under local amosthesia.” “That attack subsided, and so did another which appeared two years ago, but when _tho most recent symptoms appeared, iu tho middle of last month, I determined that tin’s time J. would go through with the operation. Several surgeon friends disapproved, but Dr Nicholas agreed with me, and he was inj' attendant and observer when I removed tbe appendix on Monday, October 8 th.” REDUCED RLOOD PRESSURE. First, Dr Meals explained, lie took measures to reduce his blood pressure, .so that ho might not bo liable to a fainting spell during a critical point of his self-cutting. When tho blood pressure was reduced as far as it would go normally, tho young surgeon took doses of nitroglycerine to lower it artificially still further. “It was a satisfaction to learn that even then 1 did not feed iu tho least inclined to faint,” ho said. “I felt that was tho greatest danger 1 was called upon to face.” Next, as is customary before, all operations, Dr Meals dosed himself with medicines designed to cause quickly coagulation of tho blood after his flesh had been cut. He tested his blood daily while under this treatment. Describing Ins training, the young surgeon went on: “it was necessary, of course, that I become accustomed to tbo .strained and unusual position in which I would have to place myself during tho operation, and so for periods of sometimes an hour and a-bnlf at a time I lay on my back with my head and shoulders bent forward in tho position necessary to observe an abdominal incision.” With Dr Nicholas and two nurses beside him, and also a (rained general anaisthetist with a supply of other in case anything should go wrong, IP Meal placed himself on the operating table, jabbed a syringe of novocnino iuto his abdomen, waited a few moments, calmly made, tho first in cisiou, and then cut down through (ho three abdominal walls. “Pain? Yes, there was some—especially when I adjusted a clamp to the point from which I had to cut away the appendix,” tho surgeon now explained. “ But this little shock was nothing compared to the great shock which general anaesthesia indicts upon patients.” Entirely unaided was Dr Meals's removal of tho appendix, washing and dressing of the wound, and eventual culturing of the centre incision. Within twenty-four hours, ho said, all hibodily functions were normal. “The shock of general anrcallicoia. not tho subsequent operation, is tho most dangerous and uncomfortable pan, of surgical treatment,” he said. “My experience with local amosthesia speaks for itself.” Dr Meals is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Ho was an aviator during the World War, and first became interested in surgery by watching the medical official of liis outfit perforin operations. Another reason advanced for his selloperating was that he wished to perform the operation “to test my mental discipline and self-control, which 1 believe every surgeon should have. As a result of the experiment I would say certain persons not of a highly nervous temperament could be operated on as J did with less pain after the operation than if they bad taken gas.”