THE LATE KAISER

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9186, 16 October 1888, Page 5

THE LATE KAISER

DR. MACKENZIE'S BOOK.

LETTER FROM THE DOWAGER EMPRESS. [press association.] JSeblin, October 12. The Dowager Empress Victoria has written to Sir Morell Mackenzie, admitting that he had warned her early in the illness of the late Emperor that a malignant growth might appear. Sir Morell Mackenzie's book contains 20 plates showing details of the larynx, and the use of the canula. Dr. Mackenzie denies that he wounded the vocal chord in his operations, and states that Dr. Gebhardt was guilty of making false accusations against him in asserting that this was so. All Dr. Mackenzie's German colleagues, including Dr. Bergmann, admitted that he was right in his treatment of the patient. Dr. Mackenzie affirms that Dr. Bergmann opened the trachea three millimetres (one-eighth of an inch) to the right of the middle line when he used the canula, thus causing loss of tissue, intense discomfort, andj exhaustion. Dr. Mackenzie accuses Dr. Bergmann of wrongly diagnosing secondary cancer in the lung, and says the death blow was given to the Emperor on April 12 through Dr. Bergmann's tube making a false passage, thus inflaming the trachea, exhausting the strength of the patient, and shortening his life by ten months. The Emperor had suffered no pain until tracheotomy was performed. In cases of cancer this operation ninety-one times out of a hundred was fatal, the voice was destroyed by it, and the recurrence of the disease was almost certain. Dr. Gebhardt's ruthless cauterising of the Emperor's throat Avas unexampled in the history of surgery, and was likely to make a benign complaint a malignant one. The British Medical Journal publishes a facsimile of a letter written by the late Emperor Frederick containing the expression " Bergmann ill-treated me." London, October 14. Almost the whole of Sir F. Morell Mackenzie's book was surreptitiously given to the press, and the publishers are naturally very much annoyed. They are taking to discover the authors of the theft ot the Paris edition of the work. The New York Herald first published the principal facts contained in the book.