MORTALITY FROM APPENDICITIS

To the Editor:— I was greatly pleased that in your editorial inThe JournalJune 20 you were kind enough to make reference to my mortality in the handling of the late suppurative appendicitis cases. This reference, however, is misleading in that it fails to make clear the fundamental principle for which contention was made. In season and out of season, for over thirty years, I have been insisting by both precept and example that the secret of the mortality in appendicitis lies in the application of the principle of deferred operation to the late cases of suppurative appendiceal peritonitis: not the early perforations but the cases seen for the first time on the third, fourth or fifth day of the acute spreading peritonitis. This, of course, is simply a faithful carrying out of the principles that Ochsner enunciated and insisted on. At the annual session of the American Medical