about the size of a hand, quite firm, and not fluctuating, and
accompanied by marked dullness, around McBurney's point and
downward, and only in this region severe stabbing pain; in other
areas no dullness."

[The sallow complexion, elongated face, hollow eyes, pulse 140,
temperature 101.3 degree F., clammy skin, cold extremities, greenish
vomiting with fecal odor; all these symptoms would have been ominous
of a fatal collapse had it not been that the symptoms were those of
narcotism, and not the symptoms of peritonitis as they were supposed
to be. The small, regular and frequent pulse, the clammy
perspiration, cool skin, cold hands, the eructations and mild
paroxysms of vomiting of greenish yellow material with fecal odor,
were symptoms produced by opium, food and morphine, as should have
been fully apparent to any medical mind.

If the patient had been treated rationally from the start, at this
stage of the disease he would have been as comfortable as at any
time in his life, and after the opening of the abscess, forced
though it was and followed by those symptoms, the patient still had
a chance to get well if he had been left alone. See how he responded
when given a little opportunity. Only twenty four hours after "the
intake of food was reduced to almost nothing" the abdomen was softer
and readily palpated and percussed. Just imagine, reader, what a
difference there would have been in this case if the poor, miserable
victim had been allowed the quiet he so much needed--if he had been
left without daily bimanual examinations, food and drugs. The
patient was kept in an abnormal state from the first hour that the
doctoring began to the last hour of his life.]