A Child's Hip Set Without a Knife, the First Time West of the Rockies
Surgeons from across the state crowd a Seattle operating room to watch a Baltimore doctor straighten a two-year-old's dislocated hip by hand.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Seattle. — At the Seattle general hospital Tuesday morning, Dr. Bloodgood of the Johns Hopkins medical college of Baltimore, one of the most celebrated physicians in the United States, performed the Lorenz bloodless operation for a congenital dislocation of the hip on the two-and-a-half-year-old daughter of John Reynolds.
The operation was the first of its kind to be conducted west of the Rocky mountains.
The straightened joint was bound up after the work was finished, and the little one was placed in bed. Physicians and surgeons from all parts of the state, who were present to witness the operation, pronounced it a complete success.
The child was born with a crooked hip, which, until the discoveries of Dr. Lorenz a year ago startled the medical world, was considered incurable without the use of a knife. In New York Dr. Lorenz demonstrated that cutting was not necessary, and Dr. Bloodgood, following the Lorenz method, conducted in this city the first operation of its kind on the Pacific coast.
A few days ago the King County Medical association sent out notices to all members throughout the state, notifying them of the contemplated visit of Dr. Bloodgood to the city, and the purpose for which he was coming. As a result, when the child was brought to the operating table at the hospital, the room was filled with medical men and women. The child did not seem to suffer at any time, and came out from the ordeal in excellent condition.
Very few of the medical men present had ever witnessed the work before, and they were enthusiastic over the manner in which it was done, and are satisfied that it will prove to be a complete success.
“The child did not seem to suffer at any time, and came out from the ordeal in excellent condition.”
Before Lorenz, a child born with a dislocated hip faced the knife or a limp for life. What makes this clipping worth keeping is the image of a provincial operating room packed with country doctors who had never seen the procedure and might never see it again — medical knowledge arriving by steamship and telegraph rather than journal. The same question haunts rural medicine now: how fast does a technique reach a small town, and who pays for the travel?
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