In 1920, a Chicago courtroom heard a medical malpractice case that would sound painfully familiar even today.
Mrs. Hulda Anderson, the wife of a letter carrier, claimed that after undergoing an appendicitis operation in May 1918, her surgical wound refused to heal for seven long months. According to her testimony, the cause was later discovered by another surgeon: fourteen inches of gauze had allegedly been left inside her body.
The jury sided with Mrs. Anderson, awarding her $10,000 in damages against Dr. Albert J. Ochsner, head of the medical staff at Augustana Hospital. The case raises issues still central to modern hospital safety: surgical sponge counts, operating room responsibility, and what happens when a patient suffers because something was left behind after surgery.
Dr. Ochsner’s defense was that the counting of surgical sponges was the nurse’s duty, and that he had been told all sponges were accounted for. His statement points to an old but enduring question in medicine: when something goes wrong in the operating room, who is ultimately responsible?
The following article, published in 1920, offers a brief but striking glimpse into an early 20th-century medical malpractice lawsuit involving a retained surgical sponge, a suffering patient, and a jury that decided the injury was worth a substantial award.
Doctor Left Gauze in Cut, Woman Says
On a complaint that a surgical sponge was left in her body after an operation for appendicitis, Mrs. Hulda Anderson, wife of a letter carrier, was awarded $10,000 damages by a jury in the Superior Court yesterday against Dr. Albert J. Ochsner, head of the medical staff of the Augustana Hospital.
Mrs. Anderson testified tat Dr. Ochsner had operated on her in May, 1918, and that the wound failed to heal for seven months. She then consulted another surgeon, who, she said, removed 14 inches of gauze. Dr. Ochsner said that he had no way of telling whether he left the sponge in the wound.
“It is the duty of the nurse to count the sponges,” he testified. “In this case I was told that all sponges were accounted for.”
Source: Alexandria Gazette. Alexandria, D.C. December 9, 1920.
