Medicine: College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons met at Philadelphia last week and pithily discussed professorial problems.

Ignorant Public. “The Public is more ignorant about medicine than any other science.”—Dr. Charles Horace Mayo, Rochester, Minn., who, like his older brother Dr. William James Mayo (also at this meeting), always makes arresting remarks at conventions.

Laggard Brains. “Is there any use of making it possible for a man to live to be go, if his brain dies at the age of 70? . . .

Until we teach them and educate them how to live so that their brains will continue to function for the years added to the bodies’ life, there is little use in increasing the life span.”—Dr. Mayo.

Practical Education. “From $7,000 to $10,000 is necessary to enter the practice of medicine. From the first day the student enters medical college he should come into contact with clinical medicine.

Perhaps the time will come when our undergraduate medical schools will turn out only general practitioners, who will not be taught the minutiae of the theories and methods they will not use when they are in practice, but will be trained to observe the results of skilled examinations by others, especially those using laboratory methods, and to correlate them.”—Dr. William James Mayo.

Pernicious Cinema. Movie pictures of operations have been lauded as a means of instruction. But, “the cinematograph is a dangerous method if it is offered in place of the more laborious method, where the learner comes into direct contact with the patient. For the post-graduate teaching it may prove useful.”—Professor George Grey Turner, Royal College of Surgeons, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, John B.

Murphy Memorial Orator.

Electro-Surgery, the use of a cauterizing knife, is as far ahead of scalpel surgery “as the modern electric tram is ahead of the lumbering horse car.”—Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly, Baltimore. It permits elegant excision of cancer ramifications and delicate areas of the brain. It may permit operations of the spinal cord. But President-elect Allen Buckner Kanavel, Chicago, pointed out that coagulation caused by the cautery is more likely to scatter malignant growths than to retard or destroy them.

Cancer eradication requires, in the first instance, five or six great research institutions, each costing at least $10,000,000, established at strategic points throughout the U. S.—Dr. James Ewing, Manhattan.

Bronchiectasis, dilatation and inflammation of the bronchial walls, is the unsuspected cause of 95% of all “bronchitis” cases.—Dr. Edward William Alton Ochsner, New Orleans. Dr. Ochsner has not yet placated Governor Huey Pearce Long of Louisiana, who ousted the able young surgeon from his post in New Orleans’ Charity Hospital (TIME, Oct. 6).

Surgical Threads. Manufacturers of braided silk and catgut used in sewing up wounds heretofore have tested their threads five or six days to detect any latent germs. Henceforth, to satisfy fellows of the College of Surgeons, surgical threads must undergo 13 days’ test—this the suggestion of Dr. Frank Lamont Meleney, Manhattan.

Accident Hospitals. “More persons are maimed for life each year in automobile and industrial accidents in this country than were similarly injured in the U. S. Army during the World War. Most of the permanent injuries are due to the incompetence or ignorance of the surgeons or physicians to whom the accident victims are taken for treatment.” Base hospitals should be established in cities for the sole care of accident cases.—Dr.

Frederick Atwood Besley, Chicago.

President and No.1 U. S. surgeon for next year is Dr. Allen Buckner Kanavel, 56, Chicago, professor of Surgery at Northwestern University; succeeding Dr.

Charles Jefferson Miller, 56, New Orleans gynecologist.