Medicine: Caustic Surgery

A young woman with a slot in her neck —running from the right tonsil inside almost to the notch of her collarbone outside—came to Surgeon Elliott Carr Cutler. This was while he was in Cleveland last year, before he returned to Boston to succeed his old master, Surgeon Harvey Gushing at Harvard. Dr. Cutler cured the girl's cervical fistula by flushing it with a caustic fluid. He thus saved himself a laborious operation, the girl an ugly scar. The clean result, reproduced in other fistulous cases with similar sclerosing fluids, warranted reporting...

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