As to the liver, that great organ is freely examined and is treated surgically with considerable freedom.  This is true also of the stomach, which until recently was supposed to be entirely beyond the surgeon’s touch.  Within the last two decades sections of the stomach have been made and parts of the organ removed.  Not a few cases are recorded in which subjects have fully recovered after the removal of a part of the stomach.  Sections of the intestinal canal have also been made with entire success.  Several inches of that organ have in some cases been entirely removed, with the result of recovery!  The spleen has been many times removed; but it has been recently noted that a decline in health and probably death at a not distant date generally follow this operation.

The disease called appendicitis has either in our times become wonderfully frequent or else the improved methods of diagnosis have made us acquainted with what has long been one of the principal maladies of mankind.  The appendix vermiformis seems to be a useless remnant of anatomical structure transmitted to us from a lower animal condition.  At least such is the interpretation which scientists generally give to this hurtful and dangerous tube-like blind channel in connection with the bowels.  That it becomes easily inflamed and is the occasion of great loss of life can not be doubted.  Its removal by surgical operation is now regarded as a simple process which even the unlearned surgeon, if he be careful and talented, may safely perform.  The surgical treatment of appendicitis has become so common as to attract little or no notice from the profession.  Even the country neighborhood no longer regards such a piece of surgery as sensational.

The use of surgical means in the cure, that is the removal, of tumors, both external and internal, has been greatly extended and perfected.  The surgeon now carries a quick eye for the tumor and a quick remedy for it.  In nearly all cases in which it has not become constitutional he effects a speedy cure with the knife.  The cancerous part is cut away.  It has been observed that as the recent mortality from consumption has decreased cancerous diseases have become more frequently fatal.  Whether or not there be anything vicarious in the action of these two great maladies we know not; but statistics show that since the beginning of Pasteur’s discoveries the one disease has diminished and the other increased in almost a corresponding ratio.  Meanwhile, however, surgery has opposed itself not only to cancers but to all kinds of tumors, until danger from these sores has been greatly lessened.  The removal of internal tumors such as the ovarian, is no longer, except in complicated and neglected cases, a matter of serious import.  Such work is performed in almost every country town, and the amount of human life thus rescued from impending death is very great.  The work of lithotomy is not any longer regarded with the dread which formerly attended it.  In fact, every kind of disease and injury which in its own nature is subject to surgical remedy has been disarmed of its terror.  The eye and the ear and all of the more delicate organs have become subject to repair and amendment to a degree that may well excite wonder and gratify philanthropy.