The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1913. SURGERY AND SENSE.

Northern Advocate, 4 October 1913, Page 4

The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1913. SURGERY AND SENSE.

The outburst by Dean Darby at Hamilton the other day against a too frequent resort to surgery in the treatment of disease can hardly be taken quite seriously. The good priest may be an admirable counsellor in the spiritual field, but we are very much afraid that this recommendation of his to rely on "the old, homely remedies" scarcely meets the case of a citizen who suddenly becomes aware of the vermiform, appendix being part of the human system. In such an event as this the surgeon can now, with some degree of certainty, ensure the prolongation of life, but all that the "homely remedy" would yield is assistance over the Styx. To modern surgery, which has turned the operating theatre from a shambles into a place of kindly relief from torture, mankind _ owes an almost uncalculable debt. None of us who know something, for instance, of what is being done in surgery of the brain, in the excision of tumors and other abnormal developments within the human body, can doubt this for a moment. The trouble with Dean Darby is that his case was stated in the language of extravagance. Yet great though the services of the surgeon are to the men and women of to-day and hopelessly at sea though Dean Darby may be, there remains beneath his exaggerated indictment a very definite substratum of truth. The quarrel society has is not with surgery as a science, but with the bungling surgeon. We all know, in a general sense, what has been accomplished by surgery, and are thankful for it, but while on one side of the scale can be placed a great diminution in the total sum of human woe, it still remains true that in the name of this beneficial science inexpressible outrages upon jthe human body have been commit[ted, and are still committed, by uni'skilful practitioners. If hundreds of sufferers from disease or injury have had their lives prolonged by the intervention of surgery, it can nevertheless be said with some confidence that an almost equal number have been tortured, permanently maimed or killed outright. If Dean Darby had approached the matter from this point of view the probability is that instead of merely making a not very intelligent noise, he might have rendered public service in a field where the State will some day find an opportunity for introducing some very salutary reforms.