urrence of grave
appendicitis is small. In the United States census of 1900, which was
the first census in which it was recognized as a separate cause of
death, it was responsible for only 5000 deaths in the entire United
States for the ten years preceding, or about one death in two hundred.
This rate is corroborated by the data, now reaching into thousands, from
the post-mortem rooms of our great hospitals, which report an average of
between a half and one per cent. A disease which, in spite of the
widespread terror of it, kills only one in two hundred of those who
actually die--or about one in every ten thousand of our population--is
certainly nothing to become seriously excited over from a racial point
of view.

While appendicitis is one of the "realest" and most substantial of
diseases, and, in its serious form, highly dangerous to life, there can
be little doubt that there has come, first of all, a state of mind
almost approaching panic in regard to it; and, second, a preference for
it as a diagnosis, as so much more _distingue_ than such plebeian names
as "colic," "indigestion," "enteritis," or the plain old Saxon
"belly-ache," which has reached almost the proportions of a fad. It is
certain that nowadays physicians have almost as frequently to refuse to
operate on those who are clamoring for the distinction, as to urge a
needed operation upon those unwilling to submit to it.

The satirical proposal that a "closed season" should be established by
law for appendicitis as for game birds, during which none might be
taken, would apply almost as often to the laity as to the profession,
even the surgical half.

Since the chief cause of appendicitis is the appendix, the first
question for disposal is, How did the appendix become an appendix? To
this biology can render a fairly satisfactory answer. It is the remains
of one of Mother Nature's experiments with her 'prentice hand upon the
mammalian food-tube. As is now generally known, the food-canal in
animals was originally a comparatively straight tube, running the length
of the body from mouth to anus. It early distends into a moderate pouch,
about a third of the way down from the mouth, forming a _stomach_, or
storage and churning-place for the food. Below this, it lengthens into
coils (the so-called _small intestine_), which, as the body becomes more
complex, increase in number and length until they reach four to ten
times the length of the body. Later, the lower th