Publication information
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Source: Detroit Medical Journal
Source type: journal
Document type: letter to the editor
Document title: none
Author(s): Carney, R.
Date of publication: October 1901
Volume number: 1
Issue number: 7
Pagination: 206

 
Citation
Carney, R. [untitled]. Detroit Medical Journal Oct. 1901 v1n7: p. 206.
 
Transcription
full text
 
Keywords
William McKinley (medical care: criticism: personal response); William McKinley (medical condition).
 
Named persons
R. Carney; Matthew D. Mann.
 
Notes
Click here to view the editorial this letter to the editor was written in response to.

Click here to view the editorial written in response to this letter.

Both this one (below) and a preceding letter to the editor (p. 205) appear under the collective heading “Anent That McKinley Editorial.”
 
Document

 

[untitled]

Editor Detroit Medical Journal:
     DEAR SIR—I read with considerable satisfaction your editorial anent the “Demise of President McKinley.” I had followed the case, as best I could, in the newspaper reports, and was awaiting an intelligent history of the symptoms, and the result of the autopsy, as I desired full light as to the cause of death.
     I cannot, however, agree with your remarks as to the selection of a nurse. After an experience of over thirty years’ practice I am compelled to conclude that the crucial point in many a case is that of the nurse, and if Doctor Mann felt as I have, on many an occasion, he would, particularly, under the circumstances portrayed by you, be justified in selecting the individual (be her nationality what it may), who would implicitly carry out his directions and conserve his professional interests. Indeed I am of the opinion that if there was any chance of the nurse falling short in her duty on account of sympathy for the patient, it would be quite proper for Doctor Mann to do as he did.
     By the way, can you throw any light upon the case as regards the result to the supra-renal capsule? The top of the kidney was pierced, and the gangrene extended to about one inch on each side of the bullet’s track. Would this not destroy the whole of the capsule, and, in that way, cut off from the economy one-half of the service (whatever it be), that is evidently essential, as we know already, to the continuance of health and life itself?
     I find that only one instance is recorded in the medical literature at my command, that in the “Medical and Surgical History of the American War of the Rebellion,” of injury to the capsule, so that the profession has but little data to act upon in dealing with any such supposed injury, and I feel that the surgeons in attendance upon this case owe it to the profession at large to supply all the information relating thereto in their hands. Kindly, then, supply all the light that you can command on this almost unique case, and oblige,

Yours sincerely,                   
R. CARNEY.     

     Windsor, Ont.,
          September 29th, 1901.

 

 


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