Tag Archives: Dr. Blaine

Too Much History?

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

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Last November I wrote about the dilemma of what to include and not to include in the biography of my great -grandfather. I’ still fighting that challenge to some degree, but now there is a new one on the table–or at least a variation.

As I start to put all my individual stories into some rough semblance of order, I’m beginning to see gaps that could be filled with historical content. The question becomes how much background history is necessary and how much could be a distraction. Some examples might make the dilemma a little clearer.

If you read my blog post from last April on private medical schools, you’ll remember that I included the Toledo Medical College as an example of those early attempts at medical education because Dr. Blaine had received a degree there and had also been on the faculty a short while. So far in the biography, I have mentioned the school only in passing. But is that enough? Should I use that school as a vehicle to give the reader a more detailed impression of the state of medical education in the late 1800s? And, if so, how much detail do I include? My files are bulging with facts about financial problems and disagreements about the administration of the school. Dr. Blaine and several other faculty members were even charged with trespassing when they attempted to attend a closed meeting of the board. Maybe all this does merit a separate chapter in the book!

Another example is not so closely tied to Dr. Blaine. It involves the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881. Like many other American citizens, the doctor followed closely the news reports of the shooting in June, the subsequent attempts to save the president’s life, his death in September, and the trial of the assassin Charles Guiteau. The main reason I am thinking of including this historical event is that it serves as a prime vehicle for revealing some of the misconceptions then prevalent in medical practice, misconceptions that actually hastened the president’s death!

In both of these examples, I can see evidence that the historical background does help to establish the setting of the story. And, as James Thom said in his book The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction, “Most regular readers of historical fiction are reading to learn, and they gain historical knowledge from story to story. They take pride in having some knowledge they can keep and believe” (29). Since my book is turning out to be a combination of historical biography and fiction, maybe both of the examples I mentioned do fit!

I’m already committed to writing a chapter on the 1893 Chicago World’s FHistoryair because the doctor and his wife actually visited that remarkable event. So we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned!

And feel free to leave a comment on how much history is too much history in a historical-fiction-biography.

Source: Thom, James Alexander. The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction. Writer’s Digest Books, 2010.

The Pandemic of 1918

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

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In the fall of 1918, American involvement in the Great War in Europe was at its peak. Ships filled with wounded troops returning from combat crowded the Eastern harbors. At least this time, recent advances in medical knowledge meant that more of the wounded were surviving–a much different scenario than had been experienced in the late Civil War. Using antibiotics, X-ray machines, improved surgical techniques, and other recent advances in medicine, doctors and nurses on the front worked valiantly to send more boys home alive.grim-reaper

But unbeknownst to the medical community, an even deadlier foe lurked in a number of locations around the world against which they had no defense. A new strain of influenza would soon make its appearance and wipe out an estimated 20 to 40 million people worldwide in less than a year. In the United States alone, “more than 25 percent…became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic” (History.com staff, 2010).

Known familiarly as the Spanish flu because Spain was one of the first countries to experience its devastation, this highly contagious disease hit young, healthy people particularly hard. New recruits swarming into crowded army camps around the U. S. proved a fertile field for the spread of the germ. At Camp Sherman in Ohio, for example, the flu wiped out almost 1200 men (Influenza epidemic, n.d.). And the movement of troops across Europe compounded the problem. One journalist stated that “more U.S. soldiers died from the 1918 flu than were killed in battle during the war” (History.com staff, 2010).

The Spanish flu was particularly virulent. Starting out as a mild case with the ordinary symptoms of flu, it would rapidly develop into a vicious type of bacterial pneumonia, leaving its victims gasping for breath and quickly causing death by suffocation. As noted in Billings’ article (1997), stories circulated of people becoming ill while walking to work and dying within hours. In another case, four women were playing cards late into the night, and by morning three of them were dead. In San Diego, children would jump rope to a new rhyme: “I had a little bird. Its name was Enza. I opened up the window. And in-flu-enza” (Billings, 1997).

As with modern versions of the flu, this one had no respect for social class or age or gender. In some places, whole towns came to a standstill. Schools, businesses, churches, and theaters closed.There was no mail delivery or garbage pick-up. People were required to wear masks and to refrain from shaking hands or gathering in crowds. Private homes and other buildings became temporary hospitals. Funeral parlors and grave diggers couldn’t keep up with the demand.

The shortage of doctors and nurses became particularly acute at the home front. Many medical personnel had already been pressed into service overseas, and those left in the U.S. were overwhelmed trying to care for both the wounded soldiers and the new influx of flu victims. In the small Midwest town of Willard, Ohio, Dr. Harry G. Blaine, my great-grandfather, was solicited by the Surgeon General to serve as an Army physician, but hastened to reassure his fellow citizens in Willard that he would not leave his current practice unless the need became urgent. He was one of only two physicians left in the town.

The situation could have been worse. Due to the war and all the restrictions it imposed on the public, the American people were already used to government regulations. “People allowed for strict measures and loss of freedom during the war as they submitted to the needs of the nation ahead of their personal needs” (Billings, 1997). Public health officials therefore had an easier time enforcing their rules during the epidemic. No vaccines were available to prevent this dreaded disease, but people readily obeyed imposed quarantines and restrictions on travel and thus helped to slow its spread.

The flu pandemic of 1918 paved the way for the development of the first licensed flu vaccine in the 1940s and encouraged the public to accept the role of medical science in preventing future pandemics.

References:

Billings, M. (1997). The influenza pandemic of 1918. Retrieved from         https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

History.com/staff. (2010). 1918 flu pandemic. History.com. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/1918-flu-pandemic

Influenza epidemic of 1918. (n.d.). Ohio History Central. Retrieved from http://www.Ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Influenza_Epidemic_of_1918

Hospital Trains in WW I

19 Monday Sep 2016

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In World War I, over 200,000 American soldiers were wounded in battles throughout France and Germany. Getting them to the American hospitals that were constantly being moved nearer to new front lines and then to the more permanent base hospitals became a logistical nightmare. With functional helicopters not invented until after this war, trains, trucks, and ambulances served to transport the wounded from the battlefield to a place of relative safety where they could be treated for their wounds and sent back to the U.S. or back into battle.

Adding to the problem were attacks by the Germans which temporarily disrupted the railroads and congestion on the few usable roads due to heavy damage from bombings and artillery fire. At times there were not enough hospital trains to quickly evacuate wounded soldiers from field hospitals or to move the hospital equipment to new locations. The American trains, shipped over by boat, were better equipped and larger than the French ones, but with the demand so high at times, the Allied Forces shared what they had.

In some of the heaviest fighting, surgeons worked 20 out of each 24 hours. One American evacuation hospital set a record for operating on 350 cases in one day during the last offensive before the Armistice!*

William Gillespie Blaine, the youngest son of Dr. Harry G. Blaine, served in the U.S. Army on Hospital Train #54 in France from early 1918 to the middle of 1919. Even though the Armistice had been signed on November 11, 1918, Will was still working later that month, “returning from a trip that has taken four days and three nights with a  trainload of sick and wounded that are being sent back to the States,” as he shared in a letter to his mother. He never mentioned any details of his work, so one can only guess at the horrors he witnessed while transporting wounded comrades to safety.

At least for the wounded of this Great War, medical advances in surgical techniques, along with the invention of diagnostic equipment like x-ray machines, greatly increased their chances of survival. And the hospital trains played a crucial role in providing interim care on their journey to recovery.

*www.history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/ww1/Jaffin

What a Ride!

23 Monday May 2016

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Dr. Blaine in 1910 Maxwell

At the beginning of his medical practice in 1882, Dr. Blaine had few choices for getting around to visit his patients in rural Ohio. He could walk, ride a horse, or take a horse and buggy. By the end of the century, however, a new and exciting means of transportation took center stage: the horseless carriage. And it was a godsend to busy physicians.

By 1905, Dr. Blaine had acquired a small, one-cylinder curved-dash Oldsmobile, the one made famous in song as the Merry Oldsmobile, and drove it around the countryside in all kinds of weather and at all times of the day or night. It was faster than a horse and buggy and cheaper to run. Remembering to fill it up with gas, however, took a while to become a habit. His son Harry remembered vividly one summer night riding with his father back from a house call when the engine started to cough and then died on a lonely country road at midnight. What could they do but walk the four miles into town and retrieve the car the next day! Even in the 21st century, with accurate gas gauges and plentiful gas stations, don’t we sometimes commit the same error?

But one problem we no longer have to deal with is a lack of paved roads. Dr. Blaine at one time kept three cars: the Oldsmobile for summer, a high-wheeled one for winter, and a 1910 Maxwell for general use. And don’t forget the horse as a last resort! The high-wheeled car was probably one of the early autos that were basically buggies with a small gasoline engine attached. The high wheels kept the driver above some of the snow and mud on the roads–that is, if the car had enough power to make it through. Most country roads at that time were nothing but unpaved rutted tracks that transformed into a sticky mud soup after a rain. Any smart driver carried shovels, chains, ropes and other paraphernalia to extricate his car from the gooey mud or high snowdrifts when necessary. The doctor bragged to one of his sons that he had managed to drive 60 miles in one day in the mud in a 1910 Flanders, which had just recently replaced the Maxwell and was, according to the doctor, “the greatest car made.”

With his unquenchable curiosity and love of all things mechanical, Dr. Blaine couldn’t resist tinkering with his cars. The story goes that he completely disassembled his first car in order to understand how it worked and then, thankfully, put it back together correctly. Later, when he had accumulated more than one car, he built a large garage at the back of his house and furnished it with all the tools necessary to repair and maintain his prized possessions. He even installed an underground gasoline system which pumped fuel directly into the autos.

His curiosity and love of excitement also got him into trouble. It had not taken long for early automobile enthusiasts to recognize the potential for car racing as a new sport. Catching their enthusiasm, Dr. Blaine created his own speedster by removing the fenders and windshield on one of his Fords. Nothing was more thrilling than racing around the countryside in his creation, flinging mud in all directions during wet weather! Then the inevitable happened. On the way to a house call, the doctor encountered a farmer backing his hay wagon out of a lane in front of him. Not able to stop in time, the doctor swerved to avoid the wagon and ended up lying in a ditch with two broken wrists. Not a good outcome for anyone, especially a doctor! But it did manage to convince him to put away his dangerous toy and choose safer transportation thereafter.

The Century Ride

03 Tuesday May 2016

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I have many memories of my grandfather, Harry S. Blaine, one of Dr. Blaine’s sons. He was ever present during my childhood as a quiet, studious man whose interests ranged from clocks to genealogical research. By the time I was a teenager, I was taller than he was. Nowhere in my wildest imaginings did I picture him as an athlete.

But when I recently reread his recollections of growing up in Attica and Toledo, I discovered, to my surprise, that he was an avid bicyclist in his youth. And we’re not talking about short rides around the neighborhood here. At the age of 18, my grandfather took on the challenge of what is still called today a Century Ride and accomplished not only the required 100 miles or more in a 12-hour period, but added even more, accumulating a total of  almost 200 miles on his bicycle before he was finished!

safety bike 1896With the invention of what is called a “safety” bike in the 1880s, the bicycle craze took off around the world. With two wheels the same size, these bikes were easy to control and became a popular alternative form of transportation for both men and women. In fact, their popularity among women encouraged not only new styles of clothing, but also more independence and wider participation in society.

In the summer of 1898, Harry conceived of his plan to bike from Attica to Canton, OH, and from there all the way to Pittsburgh, PA, where his grandparents lived. As a warm-up for that long trip, he and a friend rode from Attica to Toledo, a distance of about 70 miles. With that successful venture behind him, Harry then took on the Century Ride. Dressed in a cut-off pair of old trousers and packing only a coat and a small kit of tools, Harry started off early one July morning on the 100-mile trip to Canton.

The roads were the biggest challenge. They were mostly unpaved and poorly maintained. Harry was kept busy weaving from side to side in order to avoid large holes and other obstacles. At one point, he glanced too long at some harvesters in a field, hit a board in the road, and tumbled over the handlebars into a shallow ditch. Fortunately, the only injury was to his dignity, as the farmers guffawed loudly upon witnessing his spill. After 11 1/2 long hours, he arrived at the home of some cousins in Canton, tired and with numb wrists after all those miles of pressing down on the handlebars. But the sense of  accomplishment made up for the temporary discomfort. He had mastered the Century Run!

That was only the first leg of his grand adventure. After resting a few days in Canton, Harry turned his sights toward Pittsburgh. It was smooth sailing until the relatively flat landscape morphed into small hills, then large hills, and then mountains. This was before the invention of coaster brakes and gears on bicycles. Going up involved pumping with more and more effort; going down with no way to control his speed became an impossibility. By the time he reached the state line and saw the mountains of Pennsylvania looming before him, Harry realized that he could ride his bike no further. At the nearest town, he bought a train ticket to Pittsburgh, checked his bicycle, and rode the rest of the way in comfort.

He did manage to ride his bike part of the way home in between stretches on the railroad, therefore obtaining his ambitious goal. But as he noted in his recollections: “This was the last trip of any consequence I made per bicycle.” Now that sounds more like the grandfather I knew!

The Railway Surgeon

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

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In the course of research for the biography of my great-grandfather, I often travel down trainintriguing side roads which lead to new vistas of knowledge. Much of this knowledge will never find its way into the book. That’s why I like to share it here in the hope that readers of this blog will find it as interesting as I have.

This side road originated with a brief mention of Dr. Blaine receiving an appointment as surgeon for the B. & O. Railroad after he moved to Chicago Junction, OH in 1905. By that time the B. & O. had rail lines connecting Chicago, IL to Baltimore, MD, with Chicago Junction serving as a division point.

That little piece of information piqued my interest. Was the practice of hiring surgeons limited to the B. & O., or was it a common practice among all the rail lines? Hopping on the Internet, I went on a most fascinating ride, which ended at this website: http://www.railwaysurgery.org. The following information is taken from an article in that website titled “The Train Doctors: A Brief History of Railway Surgeons,” by Robert S. Gillespie.

Did you know that the railroads were some of the first enterprises, along with mining, lumber, and steel, to offer medical care as an employee benefit? Especially with the expansion of the railroads across the continent, injuries to railroad workers could occur in desolate places, far from any medical facility. Consequently, “by the early 20th century, every major railroad listed full-time doctors on its payroll.” Now Dr. Blaine might not have been a full-time employee, but he was still expected to be on call at all times to treat injured workers or even injured passengers or bystanders in the area around Chicago Junction.

To pay for this medical treatment, the railroads charged the workers a fixed amount in the form of payroll deductions and funded the rest themselves. These mandatory payments were unpopular at first and caused some unrest among the workers, but in time the benefits became more obvious and therefore the payments more acceptable. This practice of payroll deductions for medical care continues today for most employees.

Other innovations by the railroads ended up becoming accepted practice. In order to provide safer care for injured workers in remote areas, the railway surgeons developed emergency packs which were carried in the railroad cars and contained medicines and sterile dressings. These were the forerunners of our ubiquitous first aid kits.

Railroads also established their own hospitals in areas where there were no other medical facilities. Some of these became independent foundations called Employee Hospital Associations (EHAs) and gave employees more say in the management of the hospitals. In order to keep costs down, regulations put limits on what medications would be available to patients and what conditions would be treated. These strict limits and centralized approval process were radical ideas at  the time but became the basis for our modern managed care systems.

Other innovations by the railroads included the appointment of women to high positions such as division or chief surgeon. And the railway surgeons not only cared for the injured, they also “advised railroad officials on workplace safety and sanitation issues,” thus providing the foundation for what has become the specialty of occupational medicine.

So even though the last railway hospital closed many years ago and railway surgery is a specialty of the past, their innovations created out of necessity in the age of the railroad remain a vital part of our 21st century medical landscape.

Piecing Together a Story

29 Monday Feb 2016

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I have always enjoyed working with fabric. My mother taught me to sew by the time I was 10 or 11, starting with hand-stitched doll clothes and then graduating to my own clothes on her sewing machine. As a young mother, I made clothing for my two children as well as for myself and my husband. Making or adjusting curtains became a necessity as we moved many times in our marriage. I never became what you would consider an accomplished seamstress but had fun challenging myself with creating a wall hanging or completing a quilt that my grandmother had pieced many years before.

Quilt blockRecently I completed another quilt that someone else had started. It was a simple task of assembling already sewn blocks into a top and then lining it and providing a backing. But it gave me such unexpected pleasure that now I can’t stop. It wasn’t so much the stitching together (the quilting part) of all the layers of fabric, but more the design and assembly of the pieces that intrigued me. Working with colors and patterns to create something uniquely my own feeds my need to bring order from chaos, beauty from randomness.

And then it struck me. Isn’t this the same fulfillment that I find in writing the biography of my great-grandfather? To gather all the disparate facts and episodes of his life and create something new that will be his unique story?

But the analogy doesn’t end there. (Aren’t analogies fun?) In the process of creating a quilt top, I sort through the fabric that I already have to see what blends with what, what makes for interesting contrast, what can  be used for borders or trim, what general theme I want to follow. In the same way, as I write the biography, I sort through the tons of material I have collected to see what might be appropriate for this or that chapter, what little detail might bring a story to life, what is interesting but may be only a sideline, and what general theme will tie it all together.

As I continue to lay out the various fabric pieces for a new quilt, I sometimes come to the difficult conclusion that a certain piece (Why does it have to be my favorite?) just doesn’t work with the others or with the theme I have chosen. So out it goes, perhaps to appear in a later creation. Similarly, as much as I would like to include in my book all the fascinating facts about the development of medicine in the United States from 1880 to 1930, too much of it will bog down the flow of the story. So out it goes — or much of it anyway — perhaps to appear in a blog post or an essay somewhere down the line.

Since my Scotch heritage demands that I pinch pennies, I try very hard to use up the fabric and other supplies already on hand for whatever project I’m working on. Invariably, somewhere in the middle of my planning, I suddenly realize that I need another yard of white cotton or a spool of red thread, and off I go to the nearest fabric store. As I continue writing chapters of my book, I come across blank spaces in my knowledge: What year was the city of Attica electrified? What does “chirurgery” mean? Why did the B & O Railroad help fund a community hospital in Willard? And off I go mining the Internet for those hidden gems.

Of course, as with any analogy, even a fruitful one, the comparison eventually breaks down. In my case, the planning and execution of a  quilt (at least the kind I make) is much less involved than the writing of my great-grandfather’s biography. And once a quilt is completed, I can give it to a loved one or a favorite charity, but its distribution is very limited. My book, when eventually published, will be shared with a much wider audience.

So as I work on both my quilts and my book, I’ll continue to find joy in their similarities and satisfaction in their differences, using my God-given talents for both to create beauty from chaos.

 

What kind of word is “chirurgery”?

22 Monday Feb 2016

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Looking at WordsIn my research for the biography of my great-grandfather, I’ve come across this word, chirurgery or its related forms chirurgical and chirurgeon, a number of times. It didn’t take long to figure out that it must be a variant form of surgery, surgical, or surgeon. But where did it come from and when did it disappear from common use? I don’t think I have the complete story yet, but here’s what I know so far about this intriguing word.

It’s a known fact that English vocabulary is rife with words borrowed from other languages.And it’s also well known that many of our medical terms find their origin in Greek and/or Latin. The Latin term for surgery was chirurgia, while the Greek form was cheirourgia. But the spelling in Old French was serurghien, which was later modified to surgien. So it appears that the word in Middle English, surgerie, followed the French spelling rather than the Latin or Greek.

Then the Renaissance came along. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), sometime around the 16th century, the spelling of the word in English reverted to the Greek-influenced form chirurgery, with the accompanying pronunciation of the first syllable as a k sound rather than an s, and with the accent on the second syllable. That would make it sound something like “ki-rur’-dgery.” Think of it like the first syllable in chiropractic. In both cases the “chi” means “hand” in Greek.

What I still can’t find is any evidence of when the spelling and pronunciation shifted back to our current form. The latest use of chirurgery that I could find cited in the OED was dated 1846. But I have seen it still used in documents printed in the late 1800s. So I am guessing that by the beginning of the 20th century at least, we had managed to shake off the influence of those Renaissance pundits and went back to the original spelling and pronunciation of surgery. In every dictionary I consulted, the variant chirurgery is now labeled as “archaic.”

If you have any more information about the history of this word, please share it!

How do your genes fit?

18 Monday Jan 2016

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GenesThe age-old question of nature vs. nurture will never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. Two children who grow up in the same household with the same biological parents can mature into exact opposites of each other. A child from a less than supportive family, who seems to have no stability or opportunity for success, can end up achieving greatness. So how much influence does your family history actually have on who you have become or are becoming?

How do your genes fit into your life story?

All my life I have envied those people who have one passion or talent and pursue it exclusively. It always seemed to me to be the only way to achieve fame and recognition. But even though I have been blessed with a number of talents, I could never force myself to concentrate on just one, devote time and energy to just one, to the exclusion of all the others. As a result, I felt inadequate and frustrated much of my life, spending a lot of time and energy trying to figure out just who I was and what I was supposed to become and achieve.

Doing research on my great-grandfather Dr. Blaine has led me to a much deeper understanding not only of him but also of myself. I come from a family of multi-talented people; it’s in my genes! And that’s okay. In fact, pursuing many different interests and talents has allowed my life to be as varied and colorful as a wildflower garden, just as Dr. Blaine’s was.

Dr. Blaine was curious about everything, especially all things mechanical. He would take an engine apart and reassemble it just to find out how it worked. He was a trained printer and owner of a local newspaper for a while. He helped to establish the first telephone service in Attica, OH, and even invented a special metal anchor for telephone poles. He served his community as mayor and justice of the peace, in addition to maintaining his medical practice. He founded a medical journal and a hospital. Other interests included photography, teaching, and writing.

Like Dr. Blaine, I may have made a few significant contributions along the way, but I have also had the privilege of touching the lives of so many different people in so many diverse situations. And that’s where I have found the real richness and meaning of my life: teaching people to enjoy the magic of handbells, being a friend to someone with mental illness, writing a grant to support a program that cares for neglected and abused children, connecting people to meaningful volunteer opportunities, encouraging the love of language and reading in students, playing with words in poems and stories, knitting, sewing, gardening, singing. My life has been full of God’s gifts, just as Dr. Blaine’s was. And I am thankful that finally I can accept who I am and what I am still  becoming. My genes fit just fine!

How about yours? What have you learned about yourself from studying your ancestors? Feel free to join the conversation!

Surgery Then and Now

04 Monday Jan 2016

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Dr. Blains Hospital - burned down in 2008 Blaine Hospital, Willard, OH

If you have ever had surgery, you many not recall many of the details of the procedure. The ones that stand out for me are the rigorous antiseptic scrubbing down by the nurses, the pre-anesthetic medication relaxing my body, the glaring lights of the cold operating room, and the slow return to consciousness in a well-staffed recovery room.

Constrast that with surgical procedures in the 1800s in the United States. Since the success rate was very low, surgeries were performed only as a last resort. With no numbing devices other than perhaps hypnotism or a cloth saturated with whiskey clenched in the jaw, the unbathed patient was held down on the operating table by one or two strong men. The surgeon was often one of a small number of doctors who had good hand coordination along with steel nerves. But he probably didn’t wash his hands before  he began because there was no understanding yet of germs and how they are spread. No attempt was made to control the flow of fluids once the skin was pierced. In the case of surgeries like cesarean section, the uterine cavity was not even stitched closed, leading to complications during the healing process.

Joseph Lister, an English surgeon, promoted the use of antiseptics in surgery beginning in 1865, but his method was not completely adopted in the U.S. until the 1890s. Even though the first surgery using ether was performed in 1842 in Georgia, over thirty years passed before anesthesia came into general use in America. Many physicians refused to use it because to them it brought the patient too close to death. Others rejected it because they were convinced that pain was part of the healing process, especially in childbirth. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the U. S. began to emerge as a leader in medicine.

It was during that time that my great-grandfather, Harry G. Blaine, pursued his dream of opening a hospital in Willard, Ohio, where he could specialize in surgery. In preparation, he went to Europe in the spring of 1914 to take a post-graduate course in clinical surgery at the University of London. The Blaine Hospital opened in 1915, with Dr. Blaine as the Surgeon in Charge. In a booklet describing the hospital, Dr. Blaine made sure to mention that out of 628 operations performed, there were only 4 deaths, a mortality rate lower than many hospitals of the time. Some of the most common surgeries listed included appendectomies, tonsillectomies, tooth extractions, and repairs of a variety of abscesses and fractures, hemorrhoids, and lacerations from labor.

With x-ray machines, electrical devices, antiseptic procedures, anesthesia, and sterilizers all in place, surgery in the U. S. had finally  made the transition from a bungling, desperate procedure to a successful tool for the medical profession.

***

Sources:  Duffy, John. From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine, 2nd Ed. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education. Basic Books, Inc., 1985.