Surgeon's Speech

A distinguished gentleman from New Orleans bearing upon his lip and chin the classic adornments of his profession was called before the Boston Surgical Society last week to receive one more high honor: the Bigelow Medal* for the advancement of surgical knowledge.

The gentleman was Dr. Rudolph Matas, born at Bonnet Carre, near New Orleans. His parents, Spaniards, sent him to Barcelona, Spain, then to Paris, for his early training. Later he studied in Texas, Louisiana, Mexico. His has been a polyglot and cosmopolitan education. In 1880 he began his practice of surgery at New Orleans.

The particular triumph for which he received the Bigelow

Medal, was in the operative treatment of aneurysms. These are pulsating tumors which form on blood vessels. Often their throbbing effect is visible, as on the forehead of a patient. Or, they may be deepseated, even on the great vessels of the heart. Dr. Matas's technique, to be duplicated by only the most skilled of surgeons, re duces such tumors.

One of the Brothers Mayo, surgeons, of Rochester, Minn., called him the "most learned surgeon in the world." Dr. Matas would probably regard his skill more effective than his learning. He told the Boston men: "Surgery is a fine name, and we can well be proud of it, for it is surgery that for centuries and centuries in the world's history has been recognized as the only art which has given to the human hand the supreme privilege of penetrating, exploring and working in the interior of the body of man. And in this, the surgeon's art transcends all others, even that art which has accomplished the marvel of transfiguring inert clay, marble and bronze into dreams of beauty and esthetic delight for the delectation senses." of the imagination and the

Regarding the moral problems of a surgeon he said: "We immediately come face to face with situations and circumstances which rarely subject the souls of men to more trying ordeals than those which assail the honest surgeon. Every day by his counsel, by a mere word, or even by a gesture, he may stand as an arbiter be tween the life or death of one of his fellows. . . . Lives of infants, who are on the threshold of life and in whom are centred the hopes and happiness of their parents, of women, young women, especially, who appeal most touchingly to our sensibilities, our affections."

He is 66, and he said with no drop of his calm eyes: "What must be asked of the surgeon is not that he should be young, but that he must not be old. When old age appears at the turning of the road, when the sacred fire begins to flicker, and the hand to tremble, and the eye to blur, it is then time that the surgeon should think of rest. Let him then do as 'the tired wayfarer, after a long journey, resting by the wayside, look on and watch the passers-by who have followed him in the rugged, but wondrous road that he, himself, has trod.'"

*The late Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) of Boston established the medal eleven years ago in memory of his father, Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818-90), first to use ether as a regular preoperative procedure. This was in 1850. The Bigelow Medal has heretofore been given only to Dr. William James Mayo, in 1921, and to Dr. William Williams Keen of Philadelphia, in 1922.