Step In and Stand Clear of the Good News

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We probably know nicotine best today for its role in creating the highly addictive chemistry of tobacco, a reason that so many people find it difficult to quit smoking even though the habit is so conclusively linked to disorders ranging from heart disease to lung cancer.  The compound has such a potent effect on the brain that some researchers have even suggested that it provides a gateway for drugs such as cocaine. Others have wondered whether that potency could somehow be harnessed to good effect, as a treatment for disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s to depression, although its addictive nature makes such approaches obviously complicated.

Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane

On 15 February 1921, as the American surgeon Evan O’Neill Kane lay on a table in a hospital waiting to have his appendix removed, he decided to conduct an impromptu experiment — to find out whether it would be possible to remove his own appendix. So he sat up and announced that everyone should step back because he was going to perform the operation himself. Since he was the chief surgeon at the hospital, the staff reluctantly obeyed his strange command.

Kane propped himself up with pillows in order to get a good view of his abdomen. He injected cocaine and adrenalin into his abdominal wall, and then he swiftly cut through the superficial tissue, found the swollen appendix, and excised it.

The entire procedure took thirty minutes. There was only one slight moment of panic when part of his intestines unexpectedly popped out of his stomach as he leaned too far forward, but he calmly shoved his guts back inside his body and continued working. Kane noted he probably could have completed the operation even more quickly if it hadn’t been for the air of chaos in the operating room as the hospital staff milled around, unsure of what they were supposed to do.

Kane enjoyed a full and swift recovery. Fourteen days later he was back in the hospital operating on other patients. He later explained that he had performed the self-experiment both to know how a patient feels when being operated upon, and to better understand how to use local anaesthesia to best advantage.

Dr. Kane operating on himself in 1932

Emboldened by his success, when he needed a hernia operation eleven years later, at the age of seventy-one, he decided to self-operate again. Unfortunately, this second surgery proved more problematic. He never fully regained his strength, came down with pneumonia, and died three months later.

A self-described magician and escapist who once set a record for eating a household light bulb in fewer than 34 seconds was arrested and charged with committing a string of Brooklyn bank robberies, the police said Thursday.