In 1910, a Los Angeles man brought forward the kind of medical malpractice claim that still makes patients uneasy more than a century later: he alleged that doctors had left a surgical sponge inside his body after an operation.
William A. Bowen filed a $25,000 lawsuit against two surgeons, Dr. J. Bowen and Dr. Howard W. Seager, as well as the Angelus Hospital Association of Los Angeles. According to the claim, Bowen had gone to the doctors seeking treatment for what the newspaper described as an “abnormal pathological condition.” The physicians allegedly warned him that he would die without surgery, and Bowen agreed to undergo the operation at Angelus Hospital.
What followed, according to the lawsuit, was a horrifying case of surgical negligence. Bowen claimed that after his abdominal cavity had been opened, the wound was sewn closed while a surgical sponge remained inside him. He was eventually discharged from the hospital, only to suffer further complications at home. Within days, he alleged, the sponge began to work its way out through the surgical wound.
The article below gives only the legal accusation, not the final outcome of the case, but the details are grim enough. Bowen said he had to return to the hospital for additional treatment and remained there for nearly another month. He claimed the ordeal left him permanently damaged, in pain, burdened with medical bills, and unlikely to ever fully recover.
Today, retained surgical items are recognized as serious medical errors. Hospitals use counting procedures, checklists, and tracking systems to prevent them. But this 1910 case shows that the fear of being harmed by the very people entrusted with one’s care is far from new. Behind the formal court language is a deeply human story: a patient who went into surgery hoping to be saved, and who later claimed that carelessness nearly destroyed him.
Charge Carelessness in Suit Against Hospital
Alleging that a surgical sponge was sewed up inside his body after an operation had been performed on him by Dr. J. Bowen and Dr. Howard W. Seager, William A. Bowen filed in the superior court a suit for damages of $25,000 against the two surgeons and the Angelus Hospital Association of Los Angeles, in whose institution, the Angelus Hospital, the operation was undergone.
Bowen says that relying upon the representations of the surgeons that they were experts in performing operations for the relief and cure of abnormal pathological conditions in human beings, he consulted them. They told him, he avers, that he would die unless he submitted to an operation.
Thereupon he decided to have them operate upon him and went to the Angelus Hospital for that purpose. The operation was performed May 30, 1910, he alleges, his abdominal cavity being opened for several inches.
Bowen declares that the doctors and the nurse in attendance through their recklessness sewed up the wound, leaving a surgical sponge in the abdominal cavity.
He was declared sufficiently recovered July 16 to go home, and he did so, but between that date and July 22, he avers, the sponge gradually was discharged through the wound, with the result that he had to return to the hospital for further treatment, remaining there the second time until August 17.
He asserts that he never will be anything but a physical wreck, and taking that into consideration, together with the agony he already has suffered and the bills he must pay, he wants the court to award him damages of $25,000.
Source: Los Angeles Herald. Los Angeles, Calif. November 11, 1910.
