The history of medicine and surgery is filled with great success and great failure. In the early 1900s, surgery was being used to treat a variety of problems that could not be tackled beforehand, such as the case below of a boy who needed a tumor removed.
Surgeon’s Knife Takes Chance in a Thousand
Restores Child’s Sight and Makes Him Sane
New York, Dec. 26 — One of the most difficult surgical operations ever performed in New York has restored sight to a 7-year-old boy and has cured him of a nervous ailment akin to madness.
The operation involved the removal of a tumor beneath the skull that had paralyzed the optic nerve.
To do this it was necessary to cut away three square inches of the boy’s skull and then make an incision between the two brain hemispheres and just above the superior longitudinal sinus, a large vein.
The variation of a one-hundredth part of an inch in the course of the knife would have meant instant death for the child.
The boy, John J. Galick, son of a Sampson, Pa., farmer, became restless and morose four years ago and then had fits of violence in which he would attack those near him. He began to see double and then became blind.
Dr. Arthur J. Wallscheid, former pupil of the Mayo brothers of Rochester, Minn., told the mother there was only one chance in a thousand that the child would live through the operation.
“Operate,” ordered the mother, “I would rather take this chance of my boy recovering his sight than have him go through life sightless.”
The boy is out of the hospital now, his temperament is normal, he is able to distinguish objects and his sight is growing stronger every day.
Source: (1911, December 26). Surgeon’s Knife Takes Chance in a Thousand. The Day Book, p. 18-19.
