DR LORENZ.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7637, 21 February 1903, Page 2

DR LORENZ.

STRAIGHTENER OF CHILDI REN. t .TEE GREAT AUSTRIAN STJU&BOiT "WIT3 TBE SOFT STRONG EAXTD. (By JOHN SWAIN, in " M'Clure's Magazine.'") i _____ I Imagine the street in front of a big hospital filled with a crowd of earnest, eager men and women, carrying in their amis '•■ helpless and d-efcrmed children. Imagine yourself one of them, and that for three, four, even half a score years you have, watched a _on or daughter growing from i infancy into childhood, unable to walk or run and play, unable to go about with othef children and to enjoy life as they do ; ab^e only to sit patiently # on the floor or lie, helplessly in bed, and suffer physically and mentally, without hope of relief. Imagine that in all those years you had believed that for this your child tho future held nothing but sorrow and darkness. And the& imagine that you had suddenly learned i that within this hospital was a stranger come from over the sea with a wonderful ! healing power for just such cases, and that under tlw deft touch of his strong bands your little one could quickly be made whole and well. When you have imagined all that, you will have a faint idea, of the feeling that moved the great throng, which on a. day in Octobar last besieged tha Coak County Hospital in Chicago, imploring an interview with I>r Adolf Lorenz, of Vienna, who was then operating in the clinical amphitheatre ; who was straightening and restoring to health and grace «nd normal functions the crippled children who were being brought to him — and doing ib free- of charge. A faint idea you m:iy have, but a irue conception never. Fur one who- has nob so> lived with a helpless child of his own tba.t grows daily more deformed and mote pitiable, and has not for yem_ felt his heart daily wrenched with soTn>w at his own inability to relieve the suffering, can feel no more t'han a shadow of the emotion with which these men and women crowded in to touch tho hand and even kiss the coat hem of the surgeon. It was an emotion thai* words could not have expressed, yet which was instantly interpreted and found ready response in the. heart of the typical old Teuton professor aa he came out of the hospitail and stood beforcf them saying, as One in Jud«>:>, "SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO .ME." That was a moment 'which might well have been, the- culminating triumph of any man's life, thus to have, his helpless fellow beings appealing to him for the relief whichi he alone had found it possible to give. And yet ib was not with triumph, but with sorrow and infinite sympathy, that in the instant before he bsgan his ministrations the world-famous surgeon, himself familiar through a life of. struggle with tho h.ardships ai a Jaboiirci'g task, paused, and looking out over the throng said, "Poor people ! I did not know Wicre were so many cripples in the world." America, has seen many healers nf the-, hysterical order, of Dowies and Schlaiters, giving little- and taking much. ; it has witnessed annual pilgrimages to the shrines of Sb Anne, in which thousands have participated ; but not in. the memory of tho present generation, at least, has it witnessed such a flocking together of the multitude to receive the aid of a practical surgeon, who came asking nothing, bub giving much, freely laying hands on them and making them whole. And if that would imply that Dr Lorenz gained from his recent tour of American honour and affection, it must be added that though the great majority whom he treated gave him no more than that, yet from those who were able and willing to pay, he collected such fees as heretofore we have been accustomed to hear of only in connection With grand opera stars and Bohemian violinists Fifty thousand .dollars, would be a mild estimate of the profits, of thVspecialiat's six weeks' trip to this country. Double would probably be nearer the amount. Yet so completely did hus humanitarian work among the poor overshadow his few highlytpaid cases among the rich, that the latter are almost entirely lost sight of in contemplation of the whole. . •/ ,!-,_. Lolita Armour, a favourite grandchild of Philip D. Armour, had been in 'the five years since her birth unable to walk. She >vas suffering, technically, from, bilateral congenital dislocation of the hips. She was a bright andi happy child, and very popular, but apparently , hopelessly crippled. Every year increased _«r helplessness, and H er parents cast about for some means to relieve her. They finally put her under the care of a Chicago surgeon famous for his work in orthopedics, and by him she was taken east for examination by other orthopedists. There was apparently bub one thing to do —to operate by what is known as the " Lorenz method 1 ' of reducing the dislocation —an operation which has made famous its discoverer. Ths surgeon performed th« operation, and put' both hips in plaster ! casts. After a time the casts were removed, and it waa found that one hip was entirely cured. The other had slipped out of ioint again, and required a second operai tionv ■ '■ It was at this point that Lolita'a father, J. bgden Armour, went to Vienna for the originator of the operation. This "was Adolf Lorenz, Professor of Surgery in the ■University of Vienna, and head of the department of orthopedics in the General Hospital of the Austrian capital. Dr Lorenz w»s willing to take the case, but desired the little girl to' be brought to him. But Mr Armour, acting as American millionaires are supposed tQ act abroad, offered a price sufifpient to "buy" Dr Lorenz for six weeks— or, whqt was the same thing, it was sufficient to compensate him, not only for (his trip across Aho Atlantic, and for the operation, bub for his loss of time and labour abroad, and that of his assistant, Dr Frederick Mueller, as well. Of Dr Lorenz before he came to attend Lolita Armqijf, Chicago had hear<i nothing; but; the surgical fraternity hao> for his progress in .the past few years has been almost identically 'that. of orthopedy itself. Austria- knew him long ago, for 'ho grpw up there a shining ejranplo. of the truth that it is not in the New. Wpfldi aJone that the poor boy can make his way to the top. LOBSSNZ WAS A POOR BQY, a very poor one. He was born ■ oh a faxm^

of peasant stock, and during all bis boyhood and young manhood toited as only farmers toil who have never had the advantage oi American farming machinery. Ploughing, sowing, reaping, working before sunrise and! after sunset, ho built tho massive frame and the enormous muscles which make (him now able <to perform operations unaided for which others require apparatus and assistance. Not until _e had secured in his farm neighbourhood his early education and was ready to enter tho University of Vienna as a medical student did 'he go to the capital. He landed! there a green boy,, with little to go on bub determination. But he- had lots of that, and went ahead. There were no better surgeons in Europe then, than the men he studi-d undcr^ and they had no readier pupil than he. Yet all through th_ university ihe -was still the farm, boy. Ho was still one of the people. And when, after graduation, ha became known a3 the greatest of them all, he still found) time to give his best services to those- from whom he would take nothing, and' to take from the xich. whatever, he thought was due. Lorena liad chosen that department in. surgery which gavo the most play to his love- of humanity— orthopedics. Ho became literally all that the word implies, a slraightener of children," and gloried in Ms success. All his efforts were spent in endeavours to make his work more successful and to reduce painful consequences. Whenever he made a step in advance, he quickly published it and urged it upon others, for the benefit of the little «nes. He straightened! curved backs, re-formed club feet, corrected bowed legs and knocking knees, set wry necks upright, and in other ways remedied and 1 improved the cripples who Were brought to 'him. Perhaps most of all ho gave his attention to the troubles of the hip joint, and especially to congenital dislocation. When he began to practise, a child" who was born with the 'bead of tho femur outside of th© acetabulum, or hip socket, was doomed to remain a cripple through life. There* was no way of remedying the defect. Paolo Poggi was working with it in Italy. Lorenz went at it in Vienna. Almost simultaneously t^ey developed) a mode of operation — possibly Poggi having something of advantage in it — in which, by cutting down into the hip, laying open the defective joint, scooping out a false socket and placing the head of the femur in it, and then binding it in place until it had healed there, something of an improvement in the joint could be onade. There were many dangers in it. Blood poisoning might follow. Suppuration often did. The child might not be able to rally from the shock. Or, more commonly than these, the joint became- stiff, so tEat the patient would always be lame. But generally THE CHIL,D COULD WALK AFTER •A FASHION. Five hundred times Lorenz operated by that method, always trying to improve it. He wanted to do it without the knife, for it. is always *his aim, to do away with the use of the knife as far as he possibly can. He found that in every ehjld under thirteen years on whom h© operated, there was always to be found some remaining socket, however defective. He thought that if tho femur could be placed in this and held there a Joint co*uld bei formed without cutting. He went to work on that hypothesis, and At last evolved the present " bloodless " method. Some idea of the importance of this step may be gained from the fact that Lorenz alone has operated by ifcy he says, 1000 times in Vienna. He gav* it to the world, and went to Paris to exhibit it at clinics, from which it spread quickly to America,- and it has been uled many times here. This, then, was the operation which was to be performed on the little Armour girl. It consists of kneading and tearing the musclea of the hip and thigh until' they are virtually stripped from the bone. The thigh is then given a powerful downward wrench in the axis of tho body, and the head thrust into the socket. Then the leg is twisted out to an angle in which it cannot escape the socket, and. there it- is bound in plaster bandages. For six months the child must walk with these- on, every step driving the. thigh bone deeper into the acetabulum and helping to round, out the joint. By that time the- muscles have grown into their new positions, the ligaments aro strong, and the patienb should be well. The stages of the work are first the tearing loose of the muscles, and second tho fastening of the leg in a certain position. The operation can be performed by many surgeons; but Lorenz, by virtue oi those great farmer muscles and hand?, is able to do it more, quickly, more skilfully, more speedily-' than anvone else. Every surgeon knows that the fear of the knife, felt to some extent by everyone, is greater among the poor than among tho well-to-do. Persons ignorant of the methods of modern surgery had often rathersuffer slow torture and death, from deformity' or wasting disease., than submit to a cutting operation. For this reason, they keep away as much aa possible fifom the free wards of the County Hospital, where they believe the doctors are constantly seeking opportunities for cutting thein open. Here and there thiough Chicago, and all through the' country were homes sheltering children suffering aa Lolita Armour was, aud their parents, not knowing that they could be cured without cutting, probably not knowing that it could be done- without expense, hid them, grieved ove,r them, and believed them, hopelessly deformed. So when an enterprising city editor picked out the news of THE CO JUNG OF LORENZ, - and featured it as the " story of the day," with an account of what the surgeon could accomplish, he conveyed wonderfully welcome new^ to many homes. , When the papers, on the day after the Armour operation, reported that on the following day the famous foreigner would conduct a clinio at a local hospital, and operate free of charge on a poor little girl afflicted just as the millionaire's daughter 'had been, to show Chicago surgeons how h& worked, ■there was a rash to find 1 hrjn. His apartments in the Auditorium Hotel were Jjbsieged from daylight to dark, by fathers and mothers carrying their cripples. Th« hospital at which he appeared waa surrounded. His appearance o» the.street was the signal for the' gathering of a crowd. The newspapers made his features— or, va'ther, his beard and his enormous figurefamiliar to the public, and/ he found no place in Chicago where he could escape the crowd. The amazement of the Chicago surgeons at the number of cripples suffering from hip dislocation within their city was immense, but it'did not equal that of Lorenz. "Where <3b they come from? 0 he exclaimed on beholding the throng thab met him at his first clinic. "I did pot know that any city in the world had' so many." Later the puzzle was in spine way explained,' when it was found th&t a farmer 'near Delavan, Wisconsin, had mortgaged •his farm, and with the money brought his crippled child to Chicago to Lorenz j that a resident of Nebraska had oome six hundred, miles, bringing his little girl j that from Memphis -a gentleman ha4 brought his otlly son • that from all the Mississippi Valley th«y were flocking to Chicago. And Lorenz, when he saw hd\v they came, seemed to feel that hia knowledge had. been given him in trust fpv them. He had clinio after clinic at the County Hospital, at Wesley, and at other institutions, " WORKING ENDLESS HOUBS OVER THEM. TyDical of these occasions was. his appwirance at Mercy Hp3pital>at the- regular clinic of Dr J. B. Murphy. The big amphitheatre was crow<Js3_ with medical students and doctors, and with others -vvho had Jbeei* able to obtain admission^ Some of the best known surgeons of the. country, were gathered on the frcrtft benches, watohiifg wjbh absorbing interest 'ibis work 61 the master. One by

one the tiny children — some only two or three years old — were brought in and held up in the- arms of the surgeon, while he examined the joint and showed to the audience- -what the defect was. Tenderly he bandied the little ones. He quieted their fears, and sent them back to be given the anaesthetic. Then, as they were brought back to him and placed on the operating table, lie would lay his enormous hands on the affected thigh, and, with a running explanation, interspersed wifch unexpectedi humour, and a comparison of the case in hand with others, be would knead and pull and twist, till it seemed as if the little one must be dismembered. There was no suffering, for the ansesfchetic prevented that. And 1 the " work was done &o skilfully and bo swiftly that the enormous l .ength was often lost sight of. Bub -when, with a final tug, he pulled the thigh down, having literally rubbed the 'bone free, and then, turning it out at a sharp angle, held it in position, for /the administering of the plaster cast, [ there was always a round of clapping, even 'of cheers, that showed the admiration; qf the doctors (for his work. This pleased Lorenz. He would laugh like a boy and pat the- child again tenderly. He was proud of his work, and he wag proud to have it recognised, and he often looked up to tell the crowd so. All the cases he operated on were not of hip dislocation. There was a seven-year-old boy with a wry neck brought in,- and on him similar methods ](vere used. WhUe he lay unconscious Dr Lprenz, bracing the little head against bis own hip, djew up the shoulders till it seemed the neck would collapse. Then ho pulled the head out as if he would wring it off. He twisted, pulled, tugged, and at last, by a. subcutaneous tenotomy, cut a- single cord which remained obstinate, and, straightening the head, held the boy up to Ja& seen. " You see, the neck is somewhat improved," he said, laughing 'happily. Then, he bent it over in the opposite direction and held it there while bandages were applied, that it might overcome its tendency to go back to its def oimity. ' A girl of sixteen, with a clnb foot which all her life had lamed her and rendered her on object of pity, was brought- in. It was a- sadly deformed foot, which had turned a life t bat should have been Wright and happy into one of bitterness. Loresz examined ib a moment, and then with his powerful hands began tearing the ligaments apart, stretching, CRUNCHING> COMPEESSING AND ■ THEtf REMOULDING. Wonderfully quickly it was done, and ia a few minutes he stood aside and the spectators beheld instead of the deformity a, foot as graceful and well-shaped as its mate. A moment later it was hid from sight in plaster bandages. In another case ha set a defective knee without remov-ing the pateliu, as is commonly done, and so prevented all danger of stiffness. And when all was donei he went to an anteroom where Iro could meet those -waiting to see him. If in the clinic ha had been bringing joy to many Hearts, in the receiving-room it was his fate to give grief to as many more. They came with hin disease, with paralysis, witn countless other troubles which either fell outside his scope cr were too diffi°uH to be treated in so short a stay. But to many he promised aid, telling them ty come to his clinic next day, and giving their names to his assistant. They came with, money that represented chattel mortgages on the|r furniture ; labourers brought all their wages, and inon>ey they borrowed ; but the vast majority came penniless ; and to all the reception was the' santa, for the • healing art as understood by Lorenz makes no distinction on 'account of money. There were many touching scenes in this little antechamber. Crowds of pale-faced women and frightened children waited their turn; weeping mothers .'went home heartbroken, and others became fairly hysterical with joy., A worn little woman, thin, haggard, ragged, carried in her arms a crippled girl of three »cars. She found iherself in the front rank* and timidly hajided up the little girl to be examined. Hope lighted her face; anxiety and Jove were mingled with it. She watched tie surgeon's countenance as he deftly felt the child's hip and knee. She read the ' unf avGurable- answer before he spoke ifc. The child. was hopelessly paralysed,' and he could do nothing for her. " ; :■•:'•; THE MOTHER SANK SOBBING TO THE CEMENT FLOOR. Bui tho. surgeon; bowed and, taking her hand, raisad her up. Tears wens in his own eyes at her grief. It wus not Itke that of those who were stronger and had other children.. To the. little woman tfeis obild was all in thse world. And Dr Lorenz, bending, kissed b.e^ hand as be restored the child, sayiug in German, which was her tongue, " Madam, I cannot help your child. But God may heal her in His own ;time." On another day a policeman in ■uniform, a man with a. recVd for bravery in service, found himself one of the disappointed ones, when the surgeon, wearied by hours of operating and examining, was forced to (stop work for the day. At such a time the mask which convention puts upon the feelings is cast aside, and' the- natural father and niother-lovQ stand gloriously naked and unashamed. The policeman was crying and making no effort nob to. He held the cljiM aloft when Dr Lorsuz cams out, and caught .the surgeon's attention. The latter could jiofc resist the appeal to make a quick examination a-s ho passed. • ■■Come to me- to-morrow morning, and I will treat her," he said in ai low tone. "Giva your name to«my assistant." And as he went away the. policeman's joy was as tearful as his sorrow had been. Two weeks Dr Lorenz -remained in Chicago, and then went on west, stopping in. Denver, in Salt Lake, and in San Francisco, and in each case' remaining long enough to repeat in smaller measure his Chicago adventures. He operated free of charge in scores of cases; in Chioagp alone giving more tl>an forty children what they had never hoped to "have— the ability to walk. And he collected fabulous sums of money from ibis few paying cases. Aside from, the Armour ieo he was paid 2000dol for an. operation on the daughter of a wealthy North Side family. From, another he -haul SOOdol. From others, who were willing to pay to have thft work done afc home and in pi-ivate, rather than in clinic, he obtained similar rams. And every day, wh6» he was not entirely busy in hospitals, he received, these people at his rooms, charging them twenty-five dollars a, visit, and qolleoting in this way more than IQOQdoI in, the two weeks- , Orthopedy is as old a» the i healing art. In the earliest civilised' times men and women and children were placed*. in, rude fr%mes to correct deformities. .Buji never has its power to relieve suffering been brought home to the people a$ it was by this child-loving, farmer-boy surgeon- Spartan, fathers and mothers, history says., castaway, their defective offspring at birth. Their conduct has been held, up a® a^ino<i s l of fortitude thai l*as given the adjective " Spartan " nvuch of its meaning- But the courage that throws away a maimed chjld is infinitely less than that which preserves it, cares for it, facea ifc cheerfully day after day, yields to its whims, shields .its helplessness, and seeks with all the strength of mother lore for some rift in the gloom of ths future through which to espy happiness 'for the little one. ■ That is the courage which deserves reward. And it asks and can have no greater one than it has re? ceived from the hands of the wonderful straightener of children.