More than fifteen years ago, Theodore A. McGraw invented a method of intestinal anastomosis by means of an elastic ligature. As chairman of the Section on Surgery and Anatomy of this Association, he described this method in his address and it was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association May 16, 1891.
The method was tried by its author in a large number of experiments on dogs and twice on human beings before this report was made. He then abandoned the method and employed in its place the Murphy button, which was introduced in 1892.
It was not until 1900 that McGraw again brought his method prominently before the medical profession in a paper read before the Mississippi Valley Medical Society1 at Put-in-Bay.
Singularly enough, I listened to the papers at both of these meetings, but did not have the courage to employ this method of anastomosis