SURGERY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 25, 14 September 1911, Page 3

SURGERY.

DR. JORDAN LLOYD’S ADDRESS. “Dr. Jordan Lloyd’s address on surgery to the British Medical Association at Birmingham was largely attended, and was listened to with marked attention,” says the “Morning Post.” “In a passage that may cause some controversy he gave support to the views of the late Mr Lawson Tail on the subject of Lister’s teaching, and declared that the simplest antiseptics were soap and scalding water. “With regard to appendicitis, he said that it was still wrongly diagnosed occasionally, but whereas formerly the disease was overlooked, today it was sometimes recognised where it did not exist. As a rule appendicitis declared its own presence if the surgeon would only listen carefully to the story it had to tell, but ho must listen with an open mind, for it was preconceived ideas which lead to error of judgment. As to ,the wisdom of the internal operation, doubtless all practitioners were agreed. According to the Registrar-General’s returns 2276 persons died of appendicitis in England and Wales in 1909, in the proportion of four males to three females. In the two larger Birmingham hospitals last year 432 operations for this disease were performed, with a case of mortality of 8 par cent, in the acute cases only. 4.. . - Assuming it to he equally prevalent throughout the entire community —and there was no reason why it should not lie—there must ho nearly 40.000 cases annually in the United Kingdom. Yet at the date of the last annual meeting of the Association iu Birmingham (1890) appendicitis was an unrecorded malady in our hospital statistics and did not appear in the Registrar-General’s returns. He knew no more striking example, of surgical advance than that of the modern operative treatment of gastric disease. When it was remembered how small was the ordinary deathrate from affections of the stomach this development seemed the more remarkable, and could only be explained by an increasing confidence on the part 'of the profession and the public in surgical operative procedure. Coining to another modern achievement in surgery, the lecturer said that the radical cure of hernia was now possible. “Reverting to surgical operations, he pointed out how greatly they had increased in number in recent times. In 1872, the year in which his medical studies began, 316 operations were performed in ; 'tlio two general hospi - tals in Birmingham. Last jear the number was 4472. Adding the opera tions at the special hospitals like the Women’s, the Children’s, the Eye. Ear, and Throat, there was a total of 10,811 surgical operations performed in a year in a city containing few er than' 600,000 inhabitants. “After making ail allowances, be came to the conclusion that about 600.000 operations were’ philanthroi pically performed last year .u the United Kingdom.