Transcript
This scientist tried to remove his own appendix to prove a point and advance science. Here's what happened. It was way back in 1921, and Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane was the chief surgeon at the Kane Summit Hospital in Pennsylvania. He had performed over 4,000 appendectomies on others, and, according to this news report, he regarded the appendix as the source of many ills, and several years ago had advocated for its compulsory removal in all children, which we now know is probably a bad idea, because the appendix seems to act as a reservoir for healthy bacteria, which might help your But the point that Dr. Kane was trying to make was not actually about the appendix. See, back then, general anesthesia being put completely under, was the standard way to perform surgery. But it was actually pretty dangerous, especially for patients with heart conditions, which led to many thousands of patients not even being able to get surgery when they needed it. So Kane believed that local anesthesia, just numbing that area, was the answer. So when his own appendix swelled up, he decided to prove it. While his team was prepping for surgery, he suddenly announced that he would conduct the surgery so no one could say no. So he propped himself up on pillows so he can see. He had a nurse hold his head. He injected cocaine and adrenaline into his own abdomen. He then proceeded to cut into himself. At one point, he apparently leaned too far forward and his intestines popped out, but he just put them back and kept going. He successfully completed the procedure in 30 minutes. When asked about it a few weeks later, he said that he wanted to understand what it felt like to be operated upon, and to better optimize his own use of local anesthesia on patients. respect
Additional notes
After he completed the surgery, Dr Kane allowed his assistants to close the wound. This wasn’t his only exploit that would have been viewed… dubiously by modern regulatory authorities. It was later reported that he had taken to “signing his operations by putting India ink on the skin of a patient and, while the ink was fresh, making two slight scratches and a dot forming the letter ‘K’ in the radio code alphabet” I found much of this information in the JAMA paper “Do it Yourself Section,” by Dr. Drummond Rennie, and I was particularly tickled by the way he completed the essay: ”I now propose that surgeons insert all sorts of useful information into the scars of their patients: the surgeon's home telephone number, social security number, Board scores, and operative mortality rate could be included with ease and with advantage. As for self-surgery, that would solve the twin problems of excess operative rates and physician oversupply overnight.” This appendectomy wasn’t the only time when Dr. Kane operated on himself! Later in his life he performed a surgery to remove a hernia. He died several months later, but that was due to severe pneumonia and thought to be unrelated. #science #sciencehistory #historyfacts #medicine #tiktoklearningcampaign
References
- JAMA paper “Do it Yourself Section” by Dr. Drummond Rennie, mentioned in caption; DOI/PMID and source link not listed in workbook.
- Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane self-appendectomy historical news report discussed in transcript; direct source link not listed in workbook.