Evan O'Neill Kane
Encyclopedia
Evan O'Neill Kane was a surgeon
working in Pennsylvania
, United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is most well known for removing his own
appendix
under local anaesthetic in 1921 at the age of 60. He died of pneumonia at the age of 70 shortly after the trial of his son and after operating on himself once again.
Major General Thomas L. Kane
, who was also the founder of the town Kane, Pennsylvania
and a prominent abolitionist. Thomas L. Kane also played a role in preventing war with the Mormons
through his friendship with Brigham Young
. Kane's mother, Elizabeth Denniston Wood Kane, M.D. also practiced medicine (until 1909) as did his brother, William (also called Thomas L. Kane Jr.) (b. 1863), and his sister, Harriet Amelia (1855-1896). Kane also had an elder brother, Elisha Kent Kane (b. 1856), an engineering graduate from Princeton
.
Kane married his first wife, Blanche Rupert, 18 May 1893 but she died less than a year later, two weeks after giving birth to their son, Elisha Kent Kane (b. 18 March 1894). He then married Lila Rupert, 1 June 1897. With Lila he had a further six children; William Wood Kane (b. 7 May 1898), Blanche Rupert Kane (b. 9 August 1899), Bernard Evanue Kane (b. 18 February 1902), Thomas Leiper Kane (b. 3 August 1903), Robert Livingston Kane (b. 29 August 1904), and his twin Schuyler Kane born on the same date.
Kane's son, Elisha Kent Kane, was head of the Romance language department at the University of Tennessee
. Elisha was charged with the murder of his wife, Jenny G. Kane (1898-1931) by drowning her in Chesapeake Bay
. The trial was such a sensation at the time that there were crowds of people outside the courthouse unable to find room inside. Evan Kane was instrumental in obtaining his son's acquittal by giving medical evidence at his trial. He established that Jenny had a heart condition which contributed to her drowning. Elisha resigned from the university after his trial. A book by Ann Davis, a local historian, gives a fictionalized account of these events.
The arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane is related (he is Evan Kane's uncle), but is a different person from both Evan Kane's son and his brother of the same name.
. Starting in 1914, he played music with a phonograph
in the operating theatre prior to anaesthetizing the patient. Kane believed this had a calming effect on his patients and was more effective than simply talking to them as the surgeon was often distracted and conversations with the assistants, in his experience, soon dried up. Modern studies have shown that music can help reduce pain following an operation, and consequently also reduces the need for pain-killing drugs.
Kane presented a paper to the American Academy of Railway Surgeons in 1900 addressing the difficulty of administering intravenous infusions in the field. Kane served as a railway surgeon and frequently needed to operate at great distances from a proper hospital facility. Kane lists among the difficulties the unsterilized
conditions and the tendency of veins to collapse following haemorrhage. Kane's solution was a device which could administer multiple instances of hypodermoclyses
simultaneously. Kane's device could have up to ten needles, but Kane never used this many, normally four were sufficient. Normal hypodermaclysis would be too slow in emergency conditions, but Kane's invention speeded up the rate of fluid replacement many times. Kane's device was subsequently criticised for its use of an unsealed rubber bulb by Edwin Hasbrouk who proposed an alternative improved design. Administering hypodermoclysis at two sites for faster fluid uptake is a technique still in use today.
Kane made his own bandages from woven asbestos for use in the field. Sterilising dressings, and keeping them sterilised, was a problem in the field. Unlike modern dressings which are supplied in sealed, sterile packs, the dressings of the time had to be sterilised immediately before use. In an emergency situation there may be little time to do this. The use of fire-proof bandages allowed them to be sterilised quickly in an open fire.
Kane advocated, and practiced, tattooing new-born infants (in an inconspicuous place) with an identifying mark matching an identical tattoo on the mother. Kane was aware of cases where claims had been made of babies being mixed up and wished to avoid any possibility of this occuring in his hospital. In Kane's view, complex clerical systems designed to prevent errors which might be implemented in a large hospital were impracticable in a small hospital because the administrative staff to run it were simply not available. Kane also argued that it was impossible to positively prove that a mistake had not been made with a purely clerical system.
one of his own fingers that had become infected. But it was the operation of removing his own appendix
under local anaesthetic, which he did on 15 February 1921 at the age of 60, which brought him to wider media attention. He is believed to have been the first to have undertaken this self-operation. Dr. Kane did this, in part, in order to experience this from the patient's perspective. He had in mind using local anaesthesia in future on patients with medical conditions that prevented a general anaesthetic
being administered and wanted to ensure that the procedure could be tolerated by the patient. Kane believed ether
(the usual general anaesthetic of the time) was used too often and was more dangerous than local anaesthetics. Kane performed the operation with the aid of mirrors to enable him to see the work area. Although at this time the operation was rather more major than today, the incision to remove an appendix was much larger than modern keyhole surgery techniques, nevertheless, Kane was well enough to be taken home the following day.
On another occasion, in 1932 at the age of 70, Kane repaired his own inguinal hernia
under local anaesthetic. The hernia had been caused by a horse riding accident six years earlier. The operation was carried out at the Kane Summit Hospital with the press, including a photographer, in attendance. This operation is rather more dangerous than the earlier appendectomy because of the risk of puncturing the femoral artery
. The operation lasted one hour and 55 minutes. Kane was back in the operating theatre working 36 hours later.
In the latter part of his career, Kane had started signing his handiwork by tattoo
ing on his patients the letter "K" in morse code
(— · —) using India ink
. However, during his hernia operation he became too drowsy to finish the stitching up so this task and the tattooing fell to Dr. Howard Cleveland (who was later to become Chief Surgeon himself in 1938).
Surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...
working in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is most well known for removing his own
Self-surgery
Self-surgery is the act of performing a surgical procedure on oneself. It can be a rare manifestation of a psychological disorder, an attempt to avoid embarrassment or legal action, or an act taken in extreme circumstances out of necessity.- Genital :...
appendix
Vermiform appendix
The appendix is a blind-ended tube connected to the cecum , from which it develops embryologically. The cecum is a pouchlike structure of the colon...
under local anaesthetic in 1921 at the age of 60. He died of pneumonia at the age of 70 shortly after the trial of his son and after operating on himself once again.
Family
Kane's father was the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
Major General Thomas L. Kane
Thomas L. Kane
Thomas Leiper Kane was an American attorney, abolitionist, and military officer who was influential in the western migration of the Latter-day Saint movement and served as a Union Army colonel and general of volunteers in the American Civil War...
, who was also the founder of the town Kane, Pennsylvania
Kane, Pennsylvania
Kane is a borough in McKean County, Pennsylvania, east by south of Erie. It was founded in 1863 by Civil War general Thomas L. Kane at an elevated site 2210 feet above sea level. In the early part of the twentieth century, Kane had large glassworks, bottle works, lumber mills, and manufactures of...
and a prominent abolitionist. Thomas L. Kane also played a role in preventing war with the Mormons
Utah War
The Utah War, also known as the Utah Expedition, Buchanan's Blunder, the Mormon War, or the Mormon Rebellion was an armed confrontation between LDS settlers in the Utah Territory and the armed forces of the United States government. The confrontation lasted from May 1857 until July 1858...
through his friendship with Brigham Young
Brigham Young
Brigham Young was an American leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and a settler of the Western United States. He was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877, he founded Salt Lake City, and he served as the first governor of the Utah...
. Kane's mother, Elizabeth Denniston Wood Kane, M.D. also practiced medicine (until 1909) as did his brother, William (also called Thomas L. Kane Jr.) (b. 1863), and his sister, Harriet Amelia (1855-1896). Kane also had an elder brother, Elisha Kent Kane (b. 1856), an engineering graduate from Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
Kane married his first wife, Blanche Rupert, 18 May 1893 but she died less than a year later, two weeks after giving birth to their son, Elisha Kent Kane (b. 18 March 1894). He then married Lila Rupert, 1 June 1897. With Lila he had a further six children; William Wood Kane (b. 7 May 1898), Blanche Rupert Kane (b. 9 August 1899), Bernard Evanue Kane (b. 18 February 1902), Thomas Leiper Kane (b. 3 August 1903), Robert Livingston Kane (b. 29 August 1904), and his twin Schuyler Kane born on the same date.
Kane's son, Elisha Kent Kane, was head of the Romance language department at the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
. Elisha was charged with the murder of his wife, Jenny G. Kane (1898-1931) by drowning her in Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
. The trial was such a sensation at the time that there were crowds of people outside the courthouse unable to find room inside. Evan Kane was instrumental in obtaining his son's acquittal by giving medical evidence at his trial. He established that Jenny had a heart condition which contributed to her drowning. Elisha resigned from the university after his trial. A book by Ann Davis, a local historian, gives a fictionalized account of these events.
The arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane is related (he is Evan Kane's uncle), but is a different person from both Evan Kane's son and his brother of the same name.
Education and career
Kane graduated from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. He practiced as a physician in Kane and later became chief surgeon of the Kane Summit Hospital.Kane Summit Hospital
In 1887 Elizabeth Kane together with two of her sons, Evan and William, founded the Woodside Cottage Hospital in Kane. Around 1892 the hospital, together with its patients, was moved to a larger site, built on land donated by Elizabeth Kane, and henceforth became known as Kane Summit Hospital. Evan became chief surgeon of the Kane Summit Hospital, a position he held at the time of his own appendectomy operation. He died at his own hospital in 1932. The facility ceased work as a hospital in 1970, but the building is still used by Kane Community Hospital for administration.Innovations and inventions
Dr. Evan Kane is responsible for one of the first uses of music as a medical therapyMusic therapy
Music therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their...
. Starting in 1914, he played music with a phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
in the operating theatre prior to anaesthetizing the patient. Kane believed this had a calming effect on his patients and was more effective than simply talking to them as the surgeon was often distracted and conversations with the assistants, in his experience, soon dried up. Modern studies have shown that music can help reduce pain following an operation, and consequently also reduces the need for pain-killing drugs.
Kane presented a paper to the American Academy of Railway Surgeons in 1900 addressing the difficulty of administering intravenous infusions in the field. Kane served as a railway surgeon and frequently needed to operate at great distances from a proper hospital facility. Kane lists among the difficulties the unsterilized
Sterilization (microbiology)
Sterilization is a term referring to any process that eliminates or kills all forms of microbial life, including transmissible agents present on a surface, contained in a fluid, in medication, or in a compound such as biological culture media...
conditions and the tendency of veins to collapse following haemorrhage. Kane's solution was a device which could administer multiple instances of hypodermoclyses
Hypodermoclysis
Hypodermoclysis, which can also be called interstitial infusion or subcutaneous infusion, is the subcutaneous administration of fluids to the body. This would often be in the form of a saline or glucose solution....
simultaneously. Kane's device could have up to ten needles, but Kane never used this many, normally four were sufficient. Normal hypodermaclysis would be too slow in emergency conditions, but Kane's invention speeded up the rate of fluid replacement many times. Kane's device was subsequently criticised for its use of an unsealed rubber bulb by Edwin Hasbrouk who proposed an alternative improved design. Administering hypodermoclysis at two sites for faster fluid uptake is a technique still in use today.
Kane made his own bandages from woven asbestos for use in the field. Sterilising dressings, and keeping them sterilised, was a problem in the field. Unlike modern dressings which are supplied in sealed, sterile packs, the dressings of the time had to be sterilised immediately before use. In an emergency situation there may be little time to do this. The use of fire-proof bandages allowed them to be sterilised quickly in an open fire.
Kane advocated, and practiced, tattooing new-born infants (in an inconspicuous place) with an identifying mark matching an identical tattoo on the mother. Kane was aware of cases where claims had been made of babies being mixed up and wished to avoid any possibility of this occuring in his hospital. In Kane's view, complex clerical systems designed to prevent errors which might be implemented in a large hospital were impracticable in a small hospital because the administrative staff to run it were simply not available. Kane also argued that it was impossible to positively prove that a mistake had not been made with a purely clerical system.
Do-it-yourself surgery
Kane has something of a history of operating on himself. In 1919 he self-amputatedAmputation
Amputation is the removal of a body extremity by trauma, prolonged constriction, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on individuals as a preventative surgery for...
one of his own fingers that had become infected. But it was the operation of removing his own appendix
Vermiform appendix
The appendix is a blind-ended tube connected to the cecum , from which it develops embryologically. The cecum is a pouchlike structure of the colon...
under local anaesthetic, which he did on 15 February 1921 at the age of 60, which brought him to wider media attention. He is believed to have been the first to have undertaken this self-operation. Dr. Kane did this, in part, in order to experience this from the patient's perspective. He had in mind using local anaesthesia in future on patients with medical conditions that prevented a general anaesthetic
General anaesthetic
A general anaesthetic is a drug that brings about a reversible loss of consciousness. These drugs are generally administered by an anaesthesia provider to induce or maintain general anaesthesia to facilitate surgery...
being administered and wanted to ensure that the procedure could be tolerated by the patient. Kane believed ether
Diethyl ether
Diethyl ether, also known as ethyl ether, simply ether, or ethoxyethane, is an organic compound in the ether class with the formula . It is a colorless, highly volatile flammable liquid with a characteristic odor...
(the usual general anaesthetic of the time) was used too often and was more dangerous than local anaesthetics. Kane performed the operation with the aid of mirrors to enable him to see the work area. Although at this time the operation was rather more major than today, the incision to remove an appendix was much larger than modern keyhole surgery techniques, nevertheless, Kane was well enough to be taken home the following day.
On another occasion, in 1932 at the age of 70, Kane repaired his own inguinal hernia
Inguinal hernia
An inguinal hernia is a protrusion of abdominal-cavity contents through the inguinal canal. They are very common , and their repair is one of the most frequently performed surgical operations....
under local anaesthetic. The hernia had been caused by a horse riding accident six years earlier. The operation was carried out at the Kane Summit Hospital with the press, including a photographer, in attendance. This operation is rather more dangerous than the earlier appendectomy because of the risk of puncturing the femoral artery
Femoral artery
The femoral artery is a general term comprising a few large arteries in the thigh. They begin at the inguinal ligament and end just above the knee at adductor canal or Hunter's canal traversing the extent of the femur bone....
. The operation lasted one hour and 55 minutes. Kane was back in the operating theatre working 36 hours later.
In the latter part of his career, Kane had started signing his handiwork by tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
ing on his patients the letter "K" in morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
(— · —) using India ink
India ink
India ink is a simple black ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing, especially when inking comic books and comic strips.-Composition:...
. However, during his hernia operation he became too drowsy to finish the stitching up so this task and the tattooing fell to Dr. Howard Cleveland (who was later to become Chief Surgeon himself in 1938).
External links
- "Top 10 Incredible Self Surgeries", Listverse. Includes photograph (1932) of Kane operating on himself.
- Photographs from Elisha Kent Kanes murder trial at Norfolk Public Library.