My great-great-great uncle, Ephraim McDowell, was a pioneer of the use of general anesthesia for surgery. He performed the first laparotomy (abdominal surgery) for suspected appendicitis and was able to extricate an eighteen-pound ovarian cyst from his grateful patient, who was almost as surprised as he. The Medical School at the University of Kentucky is named for Dr. McDowell. Were it not for "Unc Eph", I would never have mastered my favorite pick-up line: "Hey! Does this handkerchief smell like chloroform?"
As for auto-cholecystectomy, check out this link:
Top 10 Self Surgeries
- Ed
