If these abscesses are allowed to open into the bowel and solid food is kept away from the patient, full and uncomplicated recovery will take place.  If solid food is given too soon it is liable to find its way into the abscess cavity and cause a blind fistula, which may take on acute inflammation at any time.  These cases then become chronic and are called recurring appendicitis.  It is sound surgery, in dealing with abscesses, to find, if possible, the direction nature is taking to evacuate pus and be guided by this suggestion in evacuating a pus cavity.

In order to cure appendicitis you must remove the cause.  Cutting off the appendix, opening an abscess, withholding food till the acute symptoms have passed; such treatment is not removing the cause.  Nothing short of changing the eating habits of the patient will cure, so the surgeon who knows nothing about food and its action—­what part improper eating has to do with bringing on the disease—­will never be able to cure.

Operating for this disease will fall into disrepute in time, for there are already cases recurring and the second and third operation will be necessary among those who survived the first.  There is not a scintilla of logical reasoning in defense of the operation.  Because some get well after an operation is no proof that the operation was necessary; fortunately for the operator there is no way to prove that the case operated upon would have recovered without the operation.  If the case be not complicated by bungling treatment an operation is uncalled for.  If a case has been medicated and fed to death—­abused to the extent of causing a rupture into the peritoneal cavity—­surgery must be resorted to as the only hope.

If a case survive an operation the patient is no wiser than he was before, and knows nothing about avoiding another attack, for let it be said loud enough to be heard by all, and with no fear of successful contradiction, that if every child at birth should have the appendix removed there would not be one case less of appendicitis than there is with the appendix intact.  Of course, technically there could be no appendicitis without an appendix, but the cecum would become inflamed just as readily.

No amount of forcing drugs given by the mouth can induce a movement from above the constriction, but a great amount of pain can be produced by attempting to force a passage.  No one comprehending the true state of affairs would be foolhardy enough to try to force the bowels to move.  The reader can readily imagine the great pain and danger liable to follow cathartic drugs, for they stimulate severe peristaltic contractions.  The contractions drive the contents of the small intestine against the inflamed cut-off, but there it must stop.  If the parts have become softened, which they do by the inflammation, there is danger of perforation and an escape of the contents of the bowels into the peritoneal cavity, after which diffuse peritonitis and death follow.  Surgery can hardly hope to save such patients; in fact they usually die; this is why the surgeon recommends an early operation.