350 FAMOUS UVINa AMERICANS testinal and gall bladder perforations, could not get the op- portunity for life held out by operative procedure. To meet this situation Dr. Murphy devised an anatomical button which was so simple and so easy to use, that at once the custom of immediate operation on proper cases by the surgeon at hand was established. If there is one outstanding quality of the Murphy procedures it is on simplifying procedures so that they become available for a larger number of people through the service of local surgeons. This principle is easier under- stood in the case of the button than in any other of his con- tributions. In the Surgery of the Lungs, Experimental and Clinicai^ he recounted his experience with a method which he had devised for the treatment of tuberculosis. There are two underlying principles of the method. The lung has difficulty in healing a tubercular cavity because it cannot drain readily. By com- pressing the lung by means of nitrogen gas introduced into the pleural cavity all abscesses are emptied and the abscess cavities are obliterated by adhesions found between the col- lapsed walls. The second principle is that an organ at rest is in the best possible condition for repair. The point in this connection which must not be missed is that the operation suggested by Murphy is so simple as scarcely to be considered a surgical procedure. In fact it is the attending physicians and tuber- culosis specialists who are now giving to the consumptives the advantage offered by this operation. Partaking of the same qualities are two other procedures. The one is that, where the peritoneum is to absorb a good deal of exuded material, the area of preference for its absorption is within the pelvis. With this is the recommendation that in the after care of such cases the patients be kept propped up in bed. The other is that, when much absorption is taking place, the kidneys be stimulated to work at full capacity by the continuous introduction into the bowel of a saline solution. To make this possible Murphy devised a method having all the 1 Journal of the American Medical Asgoeiationf Vol. 31.
