Medicine: Surgical Notes

When Dr. Frank Baskerville Bull of Gardiner, Me. went to Boston last week to attend the convention of the American College of Surgeons, he prudently put a pocketbook containing $28 in one hip pocket, another pocketbook containing $8 in the other hip pocket. When in due course a Boston holdup man accosted Dr. Bull in a restaurant. Dr. Bull, flustered, handed over the $28 pocketbook.

Besides the wisdom which the holdup taught him, Dr. Bull picked up a profitable amount of information from fellow surgeons. Some of it:

Grafted Eyes, Mrs. Daphne Muir, only person ever to have the corneas of both eyes grafted successfully, appeared in Boston to show how Dr. Tudor Thomas, Welsh specialist, does such grafting. Mrs.

Muir’s own corneas became opaque after a doctor spilled an anesthetic on them. Dr. Thomas located a hopelessly blind woman whose useless corneas were crystal clear and who was willing to give them to Mrs. Muir. Dr. Thomas peeled the corneas from the eyes of both women, ingeniously tied the clear corneas on Mrs. Muir’s bare eyeballs. After a fortnight she could see again.

Thyroids for Fatherhood, Premier Mussolini, who wants to raise every Italian boy to be a soldier, has discovered why, despite God, Nature and women, some Italians cannot become fathers. According to Research Director Allan Winter Rowe of Boston’s Evans Memorial Hospital, the trouble with these peculiar Italians is that their thyroid glands neglect to secrete a newly-discovered hormone. The special duty of this hormone is to invigorate sperm cells. To reach and fertilize an ovum, a sperm cell must live at least 24 hours. Premier Mussolini found that the sperms of his peculiar Italians died before they were 12 hours old. Promptly he ordered two special clinics set up to administer the hormone of fatherhood.

Presidents. New president of the American College of Surgeons, succeeding William David Haggard of Vanderbilt University, is tall Robert Battey Greenough of Boston’s Huntington Memorial and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Dr. Donald Church Balfour, 52, was elected to succeed President Greenough next autumn. He joined the Mayo clinic in 1907. From the first, the Mayo Brothers were pleased to note, patients whom he cured always stopped to say goodby. In 1910 Dr. Balfour married Dr. William James Mayo’s elder child, Carrie. He is generally rated the foremost U. S. authority on surgery of the stomach and duodenum.