The Greatest Physician

Dr. Evan O’Neil Kane was the chief surgeon at Kane Summit Hospital in New York City. By the age of 60, he had been practicing surgery for 37 years and had developed a strong interest in anesthetics.

In the early 20th century, the only anesthetic commonly used was general anesthesia, which required patients to be completely unconscious. Unfortunately, this often led to complications: paralysis and, in some cases, even death. Dr. Kane believed that for certain procedures, it was safer to use a local anesthetic numbing only the area being operated on rather than putting the whole body to sleep.

To prove his point, he needed a patient willing to undergo surgery this way. At last, he found a candidate who needed an appendectomy and agreed to the experiment.

On Tuesday, February 15, 1921, the patient was prepped and brought into the operating room. Dr. Kane, who had performed over 4,000 appendectomies, made the incision, clamped the blood vessels, located the appendix, and carefully removed it all while the patient remained awake under local anesthesia, experiencing only mild discomfort. The operation was a success, and the patient was released just two days later.

What made the event even more remarkable was this: the patient was Dr. Kane himself. To prove the effectiveness and safety of local anesthesia, he chose to operate on his own body

You may recall the saying, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ But what was Jesus really pointing to when He said:

“And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.”?

Luke 4:23