About 1890 appendicitis began to attract the attention of those
surgically ambitious. The ovariotomy or celiotomy expert began to
feel the sting of envy and jealousy aroused by those who were making
history in the new surgical fad--appendectomy--and they got busy,
and, as disease is not exempt from the economic law of "supply
always equals demand," the disease accommodatingly sprang up
everywhere; it was no time before a surgeon who had not a hundred
appendectomies to his credit was not respected by the rank and file,
and an aspirant for entrance to the circle of the upper four hundred
could not be initiated with a record of fewer than one thousand
operations.

Thanks to the law of supply and demand the ovaries retired and gave
women a much needed rest. If they had continued to misbehave as they
had been doing before the appendix got on the rampage, the demand
for surgical work would have exceeded the supply of surgeons.
Diseases of all kinds are very accommodating; as soon as a
successful rival is well introduced they retire without the least
show of jealousy, showing that they are not strangers to the highest
ethics, their associations to the contrary notwithstanding.

There are many well written articles on appendicitis, but I believe
the monograph by A. J. Ochsner, M. D., is decidedly the best, and
when I refer to the best professional ideas on etiology, pathology,
symptomatology and treatment I have in mind the opinions set down by
Ochsner, for he has taken more advanced grounds in the medical
treatment of this disease than any other physician I know anything
about in this or any other country. If his "A Handbook on
Appendicitis" brought out in 1902, had come out three years before,