Looking Back

100 years ago

A wonderful bit of modern surgery, said to be without a parallel, was performed by Dr. W.M. Lawrence, Jr., surgeon of the Overlook hospital at Summit, N.J., on Charles P. Walters, whose arm was caught in the cogs of a press and the flesh ripped from elbow to wrist. Dr. Lawrence decided on a desperate experiment in an effort to save the man’s arm. The abdomen was the only place with flesh enough to supply that torn from the arm, and an incision was made there and the arm laid within. The skin was then stitched over and the arm imprisoned in Walter’s abdomen. Two weeks later...