When you’re a Russian physician at an Antarctic research station and develop appendicitis,
the options you have are quite limited.
Basically, you can either attempt to operate on yourself and possibly survive or do nothing
and before long you’ll be dead.
Dr. Leonid Rogozov chose the first option and got rid of the organ with the assistance
of a meteorologist and a mechanic.
The crazy thing is he was not the first doctor to operate on himself to remove his own appendix.
Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane holds that distinction and actually cut himself apart not just once
but three different times.
Let’s find out why in this episode of the Infographics Show, The Story of the Doctor
Who Removed his Own Appendix (Evan O’Neill Kane).
Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane came from a family that to say was quite well-known would be
an understatement.
In fact, his father, Thomas L. Kane, a lawyer with high-up government connections, was also
a Civil War major general and his own father had been a brigadier general for the Union
before him.
Thomas Kane married Evan’s mother, Elizabeth Wood, a doctor with a father who was president
of the New York Board of Education.
Together the couple had four children.
Evan was born 6 days before the Civil War began, and like his mother, grew up to be
a medical professional.
So did his brother Thomas, and even his sister Harriet Amelia quite unoriginally got a medical
degree of her own.
His older brother Elisha, though he went a different path, had bragging rights just the
same as an engineering graduate from Princeton University.
In other words, Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane came from a prestigious and accomplished family
and he was doing his part to continue its impressive reputation.
His hands-on experiences in the field of medicine began when he was a young boy of 17.
At this time, he went with his father, his older brother Elisha, and an ex Civil War
colonel named Dr. Freeman to Mexico on behalf of a railroad.
One thing led to another once there and they found themselves caught up in the middle of
a violent uprising.
They were given permission to treat the wounded and the three men worked together under the
guidance of Dr. Freeman.
His main directives were amputations of various limbs, and while others did most of the procedure,
Evan Kane assisted.
Another decade would pass before he graduated from a Jefferson Medical College and was able
to operate on his own or make any life or death decisions.
Evan became a chief surgeon at a hospital he helped found and was rather unsurprisingly
given the Kane name.
His main area of practice was what was known as railway surgery and he performed procedures
similar to those he had helped with while still a teen.
In other words, he specialized in the trauma and routine care of railway employees, their
families, and others with railroad-affiliated injuries.
Such work came with high job security.
Due to the hazards of the job of working on a railway, doctors were unfortunately needed
quite often.
In 1897, 1,693 workers were killed and an additional 27,667 were hurt or in some way
wounded.
With the further expansion of transcontinental routes, it meant that many people were risking
their lives on a regular basis while nowhere near a hospital.
Dr. Evan Kane was one of the professionals who helped meet this need for convenient medical
care.
For this purpose he worked with as many as five different railroads.
He not only practiced medicine but focused his many talents on creating and improving
upon medical products and procedures.
An example of this were asbestos bandages, unusually strong as well as heat and flame
resistant although we are now aware that asbestos is unfortunately a carcinogen.
Mica windows, or sheets of a fireproof mineral were another idea of his to assist with surgery
on the brain.
These sheets would protect skin grafts from damage.
He also helped develop the procedure of multiple site hypodermoclysis as an alternative method
to an IV of introducing fluids to the body.
His ideas did not stop there.
In quite an unusual move for the time, Dr. Evan Kane was also known to play music during
his surgeries and was convinced that doing so had many benefits.
The use of a phonograph, he claimed, would help calm patients as well as put them at
ease and give them something else to focus on.
But while Evan Kane was credited with all these things, his removal of his own appendix
is considered his most famous endeavor and his crowning life achievement.
Believe it or not, the appendectomy wasn’t the first time he had cut himself apart, or
engaged in what is termed a self-surgery.
Two years prior he had sliced off the pointer finger of his left hand after it developed
an infected ulcer.
He used only a topical anesthetic for the procedure which effectively relieved him of
any pain.
This likely gave him the confidence necessary to use these types of drugs during bigger
and more complex operations.
And he had several compelling reasons to attempt this.
In 1921, most patients undergoing a major operation were given ether as a form of anesthesia
that knocked them fully unconscious.
Upon its initial use it revolutionized the medical field as patients were able to be
cut into and apart without feeling unbearable pain.
However, while it certainly reduced their suffering, that was not all it was known to
do.
Its side effects included delirium, numbness, loss of muscle control, and a greater risk
of dying before or after the operation was complete.
Those who had underlying medical conditions of a serious nature, such as a heart condition,
were not considered ideal candidates for major operations using ether for this reason.
With their compromised heath, exposure to the drug was considered much too risky.
Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane believed there was a way around this.
As surgery on his finger using an alternative form of anesthesia in which he had no serious
side effects seemed to suggest, there were superior options available.
However, he faced the challenge of getting those that mattered to agree.
In order to gain support for alternate drugs, he would have to prove their use during a
much larger type of surgery.
Unfortunately, there were not many volunteers who were willing to be cut open to test the
effectiveness of the only form of pain killer they would be given during the procedure.
60-year-old Evan Kane could care less.
A practical man, he solved this problem by himself.
Propped up by a few pillows and while a nurse supported his head, he lay upon the surgical
table and took out his own appendix.
After all, he hardly needed to see what he was doing as he had completed the procedure
several thousand times on others.
Under local anesthesia, and while three other surgeons looked on, he made a large incision
in his abdomen by using a scalpel.
As he progressed into the deeper layers of tissue, he methodically closed off blood vessels
one by one.
Once his appendix was out others present, including his brother Dr. Tom L. Kane, stitched
him back up again.
Evan Kane not only survived the experience, but made a complete recovery.
And before you think he was absolutely crazy to have done such a thing, it’s worth mentioning
that the procedure may have eventually had to happen anyway.
Evan suffered from chronic appendicitis and likely suffered uncomfortable symptoms as
well as ran the risk of having his condition become more serious.
It was just another added benefit that in the same go he had proven the effectiveness
of alternate forms of pain-relieving drugs.
These were then used much more frequently leading to safer operations and many more
people qualifying for more comfortable and life-saving surgery.
Acute appendicitis, for example, can lead to death by sepsis if not treated promptly.
Beyond this, he saw additional payoffs as well.
He had found it very worthwhile to experience the entire procedure not only from the perspective
of the surgeon but from the patient’s point of view.
In this way it could be easier for him to give his patients what they needed so they
had the best operating and post-op experience.
We assume there are not many doctors out there willing to go to such lengths to do this.
Even after the successful removal of his appendix, Evan Kane was not quite done cutting himself
open.
Just a decade later, at the age of 70, he again operated on himself to fix an inguinal
hernia, which is a technical way of describing an area where fat or tissue pokes on through
the abdominal wall.
This procedure was a bit riskier than the others but he was able to finish it successfully
and avoided cutting into a nearby femoral artery.
To put the risk into perspective, experts estimate that significant damage to the artery
in certain locations can cause death by blood loss in as little as five minutes.
But, once again Dr. Evan Kane was less than concerned.
In fact, those who were present claimed the doctor joked around and smiled the entire
time he was repairing himself.
And less than two days later, he was again in the operating room, carrying out various
surgical procedures on others.
This was a time when Dr. Kane had already been in the papers.
His third hernia repair operation was quite the event but even between his second and
third self-surgeries, Evan was splashed across headlines and the topic of conversation.
In this instance, it was as he provided testimony in the case of the death of his daughter-in-law
who prosecutors alleged had been drowned by his 37-year-old son.
His son and his son’s wife, Jenny Graham Kane, had apparently been swimming at a beach
near Hampton, Virginia, when Jenny drowned.
While his son claimed she had fallen from a rock and he had tried to save her, some
fishermen said they saw the couple swimming before they had heard Jenny scream.
Dr. Evan Kane came to his son’s rescue by providing scientific testimony and a doctor’s,
although hardly an impartial one’s, expert opinion.
He described Jenny’s health as unstable and that she had a condition known as angina
pectoris, or a disease of the heart, which may have caused a heart attack and her subsequent
drowning.
It was his word against little more than suspicion as there had been no official autopsy of the
body.
As a result, Kane’s son, while guilty or not, was allowed to walk free.
Evan Kane had done many things during his life that had earned him great fame, though
in time it seemed that his many surgeries caught up with him.
Following the repair of his hernia, his health never fully went back to what it once was
before the operation.
He died only a few months later, and five days before he turned 71.
But his memory lives on in improved medical care for many and even in at least one television
series.
The Knick was a show meant to take place in a New York City hospital that had a true-to-life
second-season finale.
The surgeon in the series, a Dr. John Thackery, is shown removing dead tissue from his intestines.
Unfortunately, unlike the real-life Kane who avoided a similar situation, he severed the
nearby arteries and died.
This was no mere coincidence as the executive producer of the series mentioned Kane when
describing the Thackery character.
Beyond TV, we continue to benefit from his past wisdom in real-life in one more critical
way.
The next time you undergo an operation and those in charge are thoughtful enough to play
some music or alternatively you provide your own soundtrack you can thank Dr. Evan Kane
for promoting this idea.
May we suggest a soundtrack that includes “Smooth Operator” by Sade, “Comfortably
Numb” by Pink Floyd, or the Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”?
Though, let’s warn against including songs like Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”
or R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts” instead.
These would be a tad less calming under the circumstances.
So now that you have learned about the life of Dr. Evan Kane, if you had the expertise
to know what you were doing, would you cut yourself open?
How about to improve the lives of others?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Prisoner So Violent Other Prisoners
Fear Him!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!