MARVELS OF MODERN SURGERY.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XII, Issue 2374, 2 June 1906, Page 8

MARVELS OF MODERN SURGERY.

Provided that you can employ a skilful surgeon, you may have six inches of your jugular vein removed and live for years afterwards, without feeling the loss at all. A few persons have been thus distinguished, and their lives have been saved as a consequence. The operation is exceedingly difficult and delicate. To the lay mind it seems impossible, hut we are fast learning that the modern great surgeon does not include this word in his vocabulary. The jugular is nearly an inch in diameter, and it will be readily understood how easily one can bleed to death if it is suddenly opened. It lies directly underneath the great muscle on the side of the neck which shows up so prominently in an athj lete when he turns his head. Except |in a very fleshy person, a cut of | half an inch in depth will readily j reach it. T'nlike the removal of the 1 vermiform appendix the removal of the jugular vein will never become a ‘ fad.’ Seldom, indeed, is there any need of it. There are a great number of nerves in the region of the jugular. To cut one of them is serious. These nerves intersect each other like rivers, highways and railroads on a very small map. To cut what like putting your pencil down on this map when you are blindfolded without touching a river or highway or a railroad. But the surgeon knows the exact location ol each little shining nerve, each little vein, from long study, and his scapel is sharp and his touch sure. The flesh and tissues are cut away, and the vein is lifted up clear of both, looking like a full hose when the water is turned on, while all the time the great muscle is held apart by forked steel hooks, something like sugar-tongs. A pair of clamps, shaped like blunt scissors, with rough surfaces, is fastened just above the point where the upper cut is to he made. Suddenly the tube collapses, just us the hose does when the water is turned off. for the output of blood from the brain has been shut off. A second pair dT clamps is fastened just below where the cut is to he made. Next, two strips of catgut or tine silk are tied around just above the upper pair of clamps and just below the lower pair, and all that is left to do is to cut out the intervening | ce. I lie whole operation is performed by the skilful hands of two or three surgeons more quickly than it is told. In three months' time the catgut or silk will have been assimilated into the system, a blood clot will h ive formed at tin* has** of the head, ami what was once the walls of the vein will have become a useless tube which will also ho gradually assimilated, while tissue will form ill its place. But how does 1 the impure blood from the brain now find its wav hack to he purified? is the question that is naturally asked. Just here is where nature assorts her versatility, adapability and resourcefulness. She makes the jugular on the other side of the neck, and the numerous small veins do the work, and they do it so satisfactorily that the patient never knows tlie difference. A few weeks ngo, in a case of inflammation of both sides of the nook, and the resulting disease of the walls of l»it h jugulars and the tissue around them, of a patient in a British hospital, another rush experiment was attempted the removal of both jugulars. It succeeded. The patient is upon I his feet again and as lively ns lie ever was. and to he slashed in the jugular has now no terror for him. In this instance it is shown, of course, that the smaller veins will so I enlarge their capacity tlmt they can {do the work of both jugulars.