It is rather unfashionable in these days to be going
about with an appendix inside one. But it is only a comparatively recent fashion. Most laymen, . if asked, when the first operation for the removal of an appendix was carried out, would say round about forty years ago,, a little before King Edward conferred distinction on an internal organ of doubtful respectability by having his own taken out,. , But, the actual date, I am . told by a patient who gained the .information in exchange for the loss of an inch or so of vestigial superfluity, (hence, this paragraph), was 1735. The operation was quite successful—locally----,-but the patient died of shock., They all did ; and the surgeons for a century or so. left appendixes alone. It, was only within the lifetime of middle-aged persons that the operation became the common thing it is.
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