Word: appendix
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...first time since losing his appendix and rebellious gall bladder (TIME, June 28), resilient Harry Truman left his bed for the length of a lunch in a Kansas City hospital, drew himself up to a table and with gusto devoured a square meal. Near by lay a get-well-quick wire from Washington, signed by two White House visitors, old British friends of Truman's: Winston and Anthony. While his obituaries were being filed away for another day, Truman was finding out that even some of his old enemies seemed happy about his recovery: the Chicago Tribune, which barked...
...last act. Good trouper though he is, he never made it. During the first act, grimacing in pain from what he thought was acute indigestion, he left the theater. Twenty-seven hours later, his longtime personal physician, Dr. Wallace Graham, relieved Harry Truman of a red-hot appendix and a gangrenous gall bladder. Practically bouncing off the operating table, Truman, in "excellent" condition, was a good bet to hit the sawdust trail again soon...
...patient's temperature can be dropped to 80° F. or even lower. His metabolism is slowed so sharply that even his brain needs little oxygen. French surgeons using the Laborit technique have performed hundreds of operations (for everything from heart disease and advanced cancer to a ruptured appendix) on patients rated as poor risks for ordinary anesthesia. Laborit reports no cases of surgical shock, and a good cure rate...
Depreciation Allowance. In Copenhagen, looking for a Danish bride, Minnesota Contractor Leo Larsen, 45, told reporters that his "dream wife" must 1) be able to pay half her ticket to the U.S., 2) have had her appendix removed, 3) wear false teeth, because: "I don't want any unforeseen expenses...
...others set out to determine, if they could, the dividing line between necessary and unnecessary surgery. In the year's work of any surgeon, they decided, the removal of a certain amount of healthy tissue is "justifiable." This is partly because of honest mistakes in diagnosis (an appendix may turn out not to be inflamed, after all), partly because some patients are sold on surgery and demand it as a cure-all (many middle-aged women with vague symptoms beg for hysterectomies...