APPENDICITIS.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 23 August 1911, Page 3

APPENDICITIS.

The name appendicitis must now be familiar to everyone. The disease has earned for itself a reputation of being the fashionable ailment, and it serves as a subject of conversation at dinner tables and tea parties alike. Appendicitis consists of inflammation of a small blind branch of the intestine known as the appendix vermiformis. This is a relic of what was once a much larger part of the intestinal canal. It is now functionless and is a worse than useless possession. The great danger of inflammation of the appendix lies in the possibility of the formation of an abcess, with possible perforation of the wall of the bowel, followed, as it often is, by peritonitis. It is a disease almost entirely confined to young people, and is much more common among young men than young women. The syptoms of acute appendicitis are the sudden appearance of pain in the abdomen, generally low down on the right side, a feeling of nausea, often with actual vomiting, a certain amount of fever and more or less tenderness or pain on pressure in the right side of the abdomen.

If these symptoms should occur in a young person who shows no sign of rupture, the probability is that he is suffering from appendicitis. In all such cases medical advice should be at once obtained. The large majority of all cases of appendicitis recover, but in all cases in which by the third day the disease seems progressing unfavorably, • a surgical operation should be performed. Drugs are almost always

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