[Read in the Tri-State Medical Society, September, 1883.]
“It is not new facts that avail, but the heat to dissoive everybody's facts.”—Emerson.
FOREIGN BODIES IN THE AIR PASSAGES.
I will not discuss the nature of the bodies introduced, how introduced, nor the somptoms developed by their presence; but the prognosis, and that only so far as it refers to the effects.
Of the operation itself I have only this to say: It should not exist—at any rate in the professional mind—as a dernier resort, for this would delay the surgical treatment, and the prognosis would be accordingly extremely grave, believing with Trousseau that “there is an imperative duty imposed upon the practitioner of performing tracheotomy as obligatory as tying the carotid artery when that vessel has been wounded, although death quite as often as recovery follows the operation.”
I will further urge the propriety of early operation in all cases