A PLEA FOR EARLY LAPAROTOMY IN INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION.Read in the Section of Surgery at the Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Nashville, Tenn., May, 1890.

Abstract

Bantock, of England, and Joseph Price, of Philadelphia, have written most beautifully, eloquently and forcibly upon this subject, "A Plea for Early Ovariotomy," and have conclusively demonstrated that the best and most favorable time for ovariotomy, is when the diagnosis is made, and before complications and structural lesions have taken place in adjacent and remote organs, and when the patient is in the best possible condition for operation. How true and applicable these remarks are to the subject of intestinal obstruction, is only correctly appreciated by the abdominal surgeon. Surgery has made giant strides, and in no special field has there been more advance than in intestinal surgery. In every medical society there should be read a paper written on my subject, viz,: "A Plea for Early Laparotomy in Intestinal Obstruction." The mortality from delay, incorrect diagnosis, timidity, ignorance and prejudice in the past, has