Word: crawford
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Late in 1809 Dr. Ephraim McDowell, 38, of Danville, best surgeon west of Philadelphia, received a call to Greentown, 60 miles across country, to deliver a Mrs. Jane Todd Crawford. Dr. McDowell, a big, vigorous man, rode over to Greentown. Two attending physicians assured him that Mrs. Crawford carried twins. He made an examination per vaginam, soon ascertained that she was not pregnant but had a large tumor in the abdomen which moved easily from side to side...
...McDowell thereupon rode back to his two-story wooden mansion at Danville, whither Mrs. Crawford soon followed, on horseback...
...McDowell was a devout Episcopalian. He preferred to operate on Sundays so that the prayers of the patient and friends would guide his knives, forceps and needles. For extra heavenly help during the death-defying operation on Mrs. Crawford, he waited for Christmas Day which that year fell on Sunday...
...Crawford entered, flipped up her skirt and petticoats, stretched out on the table. Two of Dr. McDowell's surgical assistants strapped her to the table, lest her painful writhings inconvenience the surgeon. (A generation was to pass before the coming of modern anesthetics.) Dr. McDowell's nephew William assisted by holding Mrs. Crawford's hands.* One of the doctors held her feet...
Thereupon Dr. McDowell cut into Mrs. Crawford's flinching side. Instantly her intestines poured through the opening, uncoiled on the table. Dr. McDowell attacked the tumorous ovary, cut it free, threw it into a bucket. It weighed, he later determined...