“Of all the surgical insanities within his recollection this
     onslaught on the tonsils was the worst—­not excepting the operation
     on the appendix.”

Dr. Mackenzie then proceeds to show how abysmal has been the ignorance of the functions of these organs from the earliest times, (including a distinguished English medical luminary who went to far as to say:  “were I attempting the artificial construction of a man I would leave out the tonsils,”) adding that the tonsil was regarded as a useless appendage and “like its little neighbour, the uvula, was sacrificed on every possible pretext or when the surgeon did not know what else to do.”

“Never,” he says, “in the history of medicine has the lust for operation on the tonsils been as passionate as it is at the present time.  It is not simply a surgical thirst, it is a mania, a madness, an obsession.  It has infected not only the general profession, but also the laity.”  In proof of this he adds:  “A leading laryngologist in one of the largest cities came to me with the humiliating confession that although holding views hostile to such operations he had been forced to perform tonsillectomy in every case in order to satisfy the popular craze and to save his practice from destruction.”  He cites an instance in which a mother brought her little six-year-old daughter to him, “to know whether her tonsils ought to come out;”—­and in answer to the assurance:  “your baby is perfectly well, why do you want her tonsils out?” the fond mother’s reply was:  “Because she sometimes wets the bed!”

Recent universal inspection of the throats of school children has revealed the fact that nearly all children at some time of life have more or less enlarged tonsils.  And the reports maintain that this, for the most part, is harmless if not actually physiologic—­natural—­and that their removal in these cases is not only unnecessary but injurious to the proper development of the child.

Nevertheless, the reports of the special hospitals for diseases of the nose and throat show to what an appalling extent this destructive operation is perpetrated throughout the land.

“Much wild and incontinent talk,” Dr. Mackenzie continues, “for which their teachers are sometimes largely to blame, has poisoned the minds of the younger generation of operators and thrown the public into hysteria.  They are told that with the disappearance of the tonsils in man, certain diseases will cease to exist and parents nowadays bring their perfectly sound children for tonsil removal in order to head off these affections.  Summing up the writer demonstrates that the functions of the tonsils are, at present unknown and that until known nothing authoritative can be said definitely on the subject, whether they be portals for the entrance of disease or the exit for the very purpose of germs of infection; common sense must decide;—­whether they protect the organism from danger or invite the presence of disease.”