"Palmam Qui Mer-uit Ferat"

"Palman Qui Meruit Ferat"

Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly, famed Baltimore surgeon, gynecologist and roent-genologist, having passed 74 and being about to round out his 50th year in the practice of medicine, has been combing his memory for injustices to his fellow men. He found two. One is 37 years old, the other 47. Last week he presented them at the confessional of U. S. Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and prayed forgiveness.

Sin No. 1. "To the best of my recollection I had been using the knee-chest posture for rectal examinations over a considerable period and later noted that [the late J. Marion] Sims had once casually mentioned his use of it also. . . . The occasion of my writing this is that about this time I secured ... an excellent publication by Walter J. Otis of Boston entitled [in translation] 'Anatomical Examination of the Human Rectum and a New Method of Proctoscopy.' " Dr. Kelly "for a long time intended to make this belated acknowledgment, giving [Dr. Otis] full credit of priority in this important method of examination, which in all fairness should be called by his name."

Sin No. 2. I operated on a Mrs. Thompson, a widow, aged 42, who had an enormous ovarian tumor. . . . The great mass of tumor filled a sizable wash tub, close by the rude table on which the patient lay in her poor dwelling. The tapping of the sacculi and the bleeding caused considerable soiling of the abdominal contents, and water was used freely from a pitcher to cleanse the abdominal viscera. After all was over, we sent across the street for the steelyards belonging to a butcher in the Kensington market [Philadelphia]. The whole multilocular cystic mass with the accumulated fluids tipped the scales at 132 pounds. As soon as the weighing was completed, a nurse dumped everything down a privy well. The tub weighed 16 pounds, leaving a weight of 116 pounds (52.6 Kg.) for the tumor. It has occurred to me many times since writing that report in trying to recall all the circumstances that due allowance was not made for the fluid used in irrigating the abdomen, and that the weight stated, therefore, cannot hold and should not be cited as 116 pounds net but left indeterminate."

Before affixing his neat signature to this confession. Dr. Kelly added a rubric: Palmam qui meruit jerat. ("Let him bear the palm who has deserved it.")

Hunting out such picayune errors is characteristic of Dr. Kelly. He has two great prides-- exactness and versatility. He was one of the Four Doctors of Johns Hopkins Medical School,* has been emeritus professor of gynecology since 1919. He continues as consulting-gynecologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Next to his home in Eutaw Place, Baltimore, is his hospital for radiological work. Besides several books he has written about 500 technical papers having chiefly to do with gynecology and other abdominal subjects. In June his latest work will be published: Electrosurgery. With the collaboration of Dr. Grant Eben Ward, assistant in clinical surgery at Johns Hopkins, he is recording his long experience with the electric knife in operations dealing with the skin, nose, throat, chest, abdomen, genitourinary system, central nervous system.

Apart from his medical work, he is a naturalist of repute. A favorite apothegm: "I love to study nature because I find on all her open pages the signature of the Creator, my Father." An Episcopalian, he last year accepted a trusteeship in William Jennings Bryan University at Dayton, Tenn., because like the Great Commoner he is "a thoroughgoing believer in the special creation of Man." He also advocates Prohibition. He once took a five-foot grey & yellow king snake before a Congressional Committee to startle them into approving the creation of Everglades National Park at the southwest tip of Florida. The king snake was his library pet. His current aversion is Birth Control, his pet foe Mrs. Margaret Sanger.

*The others: William Henry Welch (who was 82 fortnight ago), the late Sir William Osier, the late William Stewart Halsted.

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