Did Madeline Suffer Complications or was a 10 Plus Day Stay After Appendectomy Unremarkable in 1939?

Abstract

A recent Saturday night I was reading Madeline, a classic children's book written by Ludwig Bemelmans in 1939, to my four-year-old son Adrian. It is the first of a six-part series with over 15 million copies sold in dozens of languages [1]. In the story Madeline is a spirited seven-year-old attending boarding school in Paris, France. One day her teacher, Miss Clavel, finds her suffering in pain. Madeline is rushed to the hospital for presumed appendicitis, undergoes surgery performed by Dr. Cohn, and is noted to recover well in the early postoperative period.

Keywords

Hashtags

This article is published on an external journal. Click below to read the full text.