VERMIFORM APPENDIX.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 75, 25 March 1912, Page 8

VERMIFORM APPENDIX.

IS IT USELESS? The foil wing interesting letter from Dr. J. J. Kitchen, was read at a Wanganui meeting recently in answer to a question as to whether the presence of useless organs in the human body, such as the appendix,’ did not prove our animal origin “Sir, —Allow me to call the attention of your readers to a very remarkable lecture recently delivered in London by Sir William McEwen, the Professor of Surgery in Glasgow University, and one of the ablest and best-known men in the profession. “For many years it has been asserted that the appendix was a useless portion of the human organism, and that man would be distinctly better without it. Its presence has been a continued wonder to the Christian scientist, and a source of constant de-. light to the evolutionist. The latter has maintained that the presence of the appendix in man is but a relic, giving absolute proof that man must have evolved from the lower animals in which this organ is known to have its use. This argument appealed powerfully to the student of Comparative Anatomy, and the Christian war fairly nonplussed to know what teply to give. As a medical student, believing in absolute inspiration of Scripture, I read in my Bible- that God made man His own image. Is it possible, one asked, that that body contains a gross imperfection, an organ which is of np utility, and only a constant source of danger leading to the loss of many lives? Such' an idea seems impossible. All one could do was to wait for further lig'it, and now it has come! “Sir William McEwen had a peculiar accident case in which the appendix was so exposed that ho was enabled to watch its behaviour, the result being that he discovered that it plays an unexpected part in the digestive process, and that from the glands lining its interior a certain fluid is prepared, which is poured forth as required, and takes its part in the digestion of what has so far escaped the action of the other digestive fluids. This, briefly, is the purport of this most interesting and irstrUctive lecture. The British Medical Journal in its leading article reviews the utterance most favourably, and refers to the contribution' as one of great value. “What a comment on the limited knowledge and attainments of man that, thousands of years after he was created by God Mias to confers that, in spite of all his most careful study and research, does not yet fully understand the construction and use of that body which Scripture itself teaches us is fearfully and wonderfully made! True science over upholds God’s impregnable Word; it is the ignorance and misunderstanding of science (so-called) that opposes it.”