Show t SUCCESS STORIES < Of A SLJR6Or4 0 0 Famous Wielder of the Knife Tells the Turning Points of o His CareerGreat Physician Must Be a Good Man BY DR LEWIS A SAYRE LEWf I there are incidents In the career of any man who has devoted a lifetime t an arduous profession that may stimulate others to persevere in the face of difficulties the career of a conscientious 1 con-scientious physician must afford them trifling as these incidents may appear in themselves After the lapse of nearly threequarters of teretury 1 must confess that my first two patients died im1ediatlyafer an operation I pe formed on them Wandering into tie poultry yard of my fathers old fashioned fash-ioned farm at Bottle Hill Ne v Jersey 4 I saw two little yellow chickens that had Just been born united with a cord like that which fastened the Siamese twins together When one stood up the other fell down and immediately its struggling upset the first New Jersey wasa slave state then and there were thirty or more negroes on the place Close by me as usual was Pete son of black Mammy Peg and my chosen companion and body servant Prince another negro was pruning fruit trees ih the garden near by sen Run ami get Princes she said I to Pete and with that 1 had cut the living rope that held the little creatures I crea-tures together and in a moment or two they bled to death at my t I put them in my apron I was only 4 years of age and carried them in to my mother I am 7S years old now t V but I remember as fiL it were yesterday how she nearly brae my heat with V V her reproof for what she considered se consideed cruelty to animals Now it happened that i was just about the time in the morning for Dr I Bishop to drive up The doctor was in my estimation the second citizen inV V in-V the community in importance the clergyman cler-gyman being first Dr Bishop away drove in style and this particular morning he came up behind a high I steppsr with new harness and a sleek l negro driver I was 1 when he arrived generally and it was just at 1 that V 0 my father was in the habit of going to V the sideboard and refreshing himseif with much moderation but great regularity reg-ularity I may say from the abundant stores therein And Dr Bishop naturally natu-rally joined him When my mother took the two little chickens in a preserving V pre-serving jar full of alcohol into Dr V Bishop that day I felt impressed as I V never had before by his greatness And when she came out of theroom where he and my father were and found me admiring the bright brass buttons on V V the drivers coat and a = ked me I I would like to be a doctor I unhesitatingly unhesitat-ingly answered Yes I had begun to think for myself even then WAVERING AS TO A PROFESSION V But I was not clearly determined whether I wanted to be a preacher or ado a-do tor until after I was 12 years old It was then that I went out to Lexington Ky to spefad some time with nv uncle David A Sayre the first bai west of the Mississippi river The next seven the best years cf my life I spent in Lexington and attended the Transylvania Tran-sylvania university then a famous institution V in-stitution of learning the only one west V of the Alleghenies There was a fine law school and the ablest medical V school in the west with such men in I the faculty as Dr Caldwell the first American lecturer on phrenology Dr Yandell Dr Short Dr Bush Dr S Drake who wrofe the medical history of the Mississippi valley and Dr Dudley Dud-ley who had operated for stone in V the bladder a hundred times V without losing a cse The medical school was the pride of LexIngton II Lex-ington and o young o men came r1 over LHe UULUWC1 LU ULLCHU itS I S tures I hadnt studied any medicine V ns yet but the Presbyterians were so V strict that it seemed to me they didnt T V know the difference between amusement amuse-ment and viceit wasnt right to laugh on Sundayso I decided I didnt want to be n preacher To my mind there wad nothing left but medicine But I became so ill of a congestive fever S which confused my head so that I could not study that I was brought back all the way from Kentucky and stopped over night in New York at the Astor House on the way home to Bottle Bot-tle Hill Dr Bishop our home doctor had by this time been succeeded by Dr Henry P Green and at his suggestion V sug-gestion when a I gotto New York I S sent for his brothers Dr David Green V He applied blisters all the way down V = my spine and drew out a pint of serum se-rum which immediately reieved my head The next morning I felt well I sat down and wrote to my uncle in Lexington that Dr Green had cured me in one night although Dr Dudley who had been treating me hadnt done S me any good in six months it seemed to nre that Dr Dudley must have made some vital mistake in my case and I proposed now to go to work and study medicine to find out if I could what the mistake was I I ever did find it out I was going out there to tell Dr Dudley all about it and i I didnt learn it Id go out and apologize and in the meantime he could read that letter to Dr Dudley with my compliments ments TURNING POINT IN HIS LIFE After this saucy epistle I went to Dr Greens office and told him of my V resolution His office was in his residence resi-dence at the corner of Laight and Hudson streets When my uncle finally final-ly wrotei took a long time for a letter to come here from Kentucky in 1839that he wanted me to go t Europe Eu-rope and see something of the world before I settled down I had already arranged to study under Dr Gr nan V n-an in return for his medical instruction instruc-tion to help his son John along in mathematics and the classics in which I had been well grounded That decision not to go to Europe i luxurious idleness but to get down to hard wark in the profession that of all others seemed to me the most honorable and useful as well as the hardest was I believe the turning point in my life And soon afterward there happened an incident which gave me my first professional start which was the entree to the New York hospital hos-pital which was then the only hospital in the city of New York Of so little importance in comparison to the hospital hos-pital was the medical school the college col-lege of physicians and surgeons that when Dr Green sent me to Barclay street to register my name as a student stu-dent and 1 came back and told him that the college had been moved from Barclay street to Crosby street neither he nor any of the prominent doctors who happened to be there assembled knew of the change Among them were Dr Wilkes the eminent oculist Dr Anderson and Dr Cameron They had come to Dr Greens fine residence on SL Johns Parkas that part of Hudson street was named to se him raise the epiglottis by pulling out the tongue and sponge out mucous back of it They didnt believe it could be It struck me as very strange that nobody knew or cared where the medical med-ical college was in New York In Lexington Lex-ington it was the pride of the town But I soon found out that it was the thing to get into the New York hospital hos-pital That was thr goal of every medical med-ical students hopes Appointments to it were made by the attending surgeons sur-geons Dr Gurdon Buck Dr Richard V K Hoffman Dr Alfred C Post Dr John C Cheeseman Dr J Kearney Roger and Dr John Watson Each of these staff physicians had madehls own appointment of some young friend or pupil a an interne in the hospital receiving incidentally 500 for itS it-S and there was no room for anybody S else But weV outsiders used to so V VS down from Crosby street toOth hospital hos-pital in Broadway at Prince street to j S see the surgeons operate The inci f dent which gained me a entree into the hosDital was this OYSTER KNIFE OPERATION A hurry call came one day for Dr Green to go down to the docks He was too busy to go and sent me I I found a cabin boy lying senseless on the deck of a vessel just about to sail The lad had been helping to hoist sail and had fallen from the mast break ing his thigh and staving in his left frontal bone His face was covered with blood and he presented a terrible sight I knew instant action was necessary nec-essary I seized an oyster knife and pried ur the depressed edges of the fracture and declared the boy must be removed to the hospital without loss of time I went along myself and explained ex-plained the facts and had no difficulty in getting thelad admitted Then I vas invited to come back and see his skull trepanned When I left the sufferer suf-ferer he was swearing in Swedish entirely en-tirely unconscious of his surroundings But no sooner had Dr Gurdon Buck picked up the broken bone and relieved the pressure on the brain than the la began to speak English saying What are you doing there We all know now that the third convolution of tha I left side of the brain is the seat of the faculty of speech but the functions of the brain were not localized in 1S39 The next development of interest In the operationwas hernia cerebri the swelling out of the brain through the wound So to overcome this Dr Buck cut from a sheet of thin lead a circular circu-lar piece large enough to cover the wcund and bandaged it over the aperture aper-ture As sus formed in all wounds in those times long before antisepsis was known Dr Buck provided for tre draining of the wound by cutting a narrow slit in the middle of the aiecc of lead large enough for the edge of a sixpence to get into I was greatly Interested in this operation oper-ation which proved entirely successful suc-cessful and by the time the lad had recovered Drl Buck and the other surgeons sur-geons knew me and saw how willing I WTS and by and by when the regular regu-lar internes went away on their vacations va-cations I was allowed to substitute for hem and was about the hospital practically prac-tically 1 the time There was another incident which exercised a powerful influence on my tareer One day Dr Green took me with him on a call to an old house in Watts I street near Canal There we found the foreman of a fire comnany whose knee had been badly injured by his being thrown from his engine Dr Green concluded that the leg had 4been nerlected so long that amputa tion was the only remedy So he asked me as I had the run of the hostal by that time to take the poor fellow up and see that he was treated irop erly Igot him in all right and before be-fore operating Dr Post gave a very full and explicit explanation the subject sub-ject lying on the operating table all the while and drinking i all in of the tourniquet the stoppage of hemprr hage by hot irons the flat lIgature and the round ligature and the various kinds of amputations This a all specially gratifying to me as I had complained io my precentor in anatomy anat-omy at the college Dr Watts that the operators at the hospital didnt make clear enough to the students just what they were doing A SUBJtCT WHO RAN AWAY Unfortunately Dr Post had made himself only too well understood by the subject As he advanced catlin in hand the big fireman to my consternation con-sternation bounded from the operating operat-ing table and yelling Get me breeches begob Til die with me lon l-on disappeared through the door When I told Dr Green what had occurred I oc-curred he was so angry at the fire mans behavior that he said hed have I nolhin more to do with the case IdS Id-S have to attend to i myself I Before going to find my man I heard a lecture at the college from Dr Wil lard Parker the lecturer on surgery He told the class all about the tactus eruditus the touch of experience and how to apply I in detecting pus The operation at the hospital that same day was br Dr Gudon Buck and he promptly applied the tactus eruditus we had just heard about showing how he detected the pus in the subjects groin operated for the bubo by opening S open-ing the swelling and then put in a drainage tube With my head full of the mornings lecture and the noonday demonstra I tion I went to Tiernans and bought a new case of surgical instruments my own having been stolenand went I eagerly around to see my fireman I found the pus by the tactus eruditus opened the swelling as 1 had seen Dr Buck do bound up the wound with lint and went hon t 0 and told Dr Green what I had done Heavens Kentuck he said to me go butt your brains out against a stone wall and fill your head with shavings You are the I first surgeon in the world who ever opened a joint TOW FROM SOFA FOR LINT Next morning Dr Parker lectured on chronic abscesses and laid down the law that no surgeon must ever cut into a swollen joint That afternoon I hurried back to my poor patient feeling feel-ing little short of a murderer I had spent all my money for the instruments instru-ments and had none left to buy lint with I was at my wits end to know what to do and seeing tow sticking out of a rent in the old sofa on which the fireman lay J seized some of that drew out and smoothed i and laid it with many misgivings in the longi I I tudinal gash i nacr maue in the swollen swol-len knee The next day when I went to dress the wound iyt was clean and healthylooking Whatever pus had formed had been siphoned out by the tow by capillary attraction and the man was feeling a great deal better ma feelnS seat This success with an operation forbidden for-bidden by the canons of surges without with-out lint set me thinking I learned to rely on myself I discovered that in surgery personal experience was worth all the lectures in the world and that every practitioner must learn all he can from books and then work out its correctness by his own hands And what is more this accidental useof useof tow in dressing the firemans broken knee led me to the discovery that tow dipped in Peruv 9 a balsam and what I found to be better yet tarred hemp or oakum not only drained but disinfected disin-fected wounds My fireman got well and for twenty years sold apples from a stand at the corner of Broadway and Prince streets I had practiced antiseptic surgery on him without knowing itfor antiseptic antisep-tic was not discovered until the 70s but that very discovery of oakum asa as-a dressing for wounds saved thousands of lives in our own civil war when antisepsis was as 3 2t unknown DR SAYRE MAXIMS Selfreliance study workthese it seems to me are the lessons for the young surgeon to learn day in and day out Always keeping the star of honor bright before his eyes To be a good doctor he must be a good man While it is true I am convinced that a conscientious physician granted ability and opportunity does more good in the world than a member of any other profession yet i is equally true that his temptations are so strong and so constant that without conscience con-science n he will shipwreck THf SUGAR fACTORY PUlr J C AHMSTHCOTG HA CO1T b TBACTED TOE OUTPUT j Has Option On Product For Pour Years Pulp I Good Demand Evanston Cattle CBsing Fattened I The feeding of beef cattle from the beetpuIPQ the sugar factory is destined I des-tined to be a most Important Industry I in Weber county The pulp sells read fly to the farmers at 50 cents per ton and is being hauled tQ the distant pre ducts of the county Farmers report it as ajvery satisfactory fattening food for stock The pulp output of the factory fac-tory has been sold to J C Armstrong for this season and the next season with an option at the same figure for four years Sir Armstrong has now abou 200 head V of cattle being fattened by the Ogden Live Stock Feeding company for an Evanston firm |