Early one morning, while I was working as an engineer in a large hotel in Boston, my hand was caught in a belt on a small engine. The engine was not running at high speed, but I was drawn into it and thrown over into the space between it and the ammonia condenser. The set screws on the hub of the eccentric had practically torn my arm to pieces before it was freed from the belt that caught it.
There was no pain, but I knew that something must be done at once. I started for the other side of the building to get help. I knew that the house doctor would be called and the chief engineer, but I wanted a practitioner. So I told some one to telephone for my friend to come at once. The doctor and the chief engineer arrived shortly. There was not much that the doctor could do; the tourniquet that the porter and I had rigged on my arm was holding nicely. He naturally insisted that I should be taken to the hospital, and sent for the ambulance; but I objected because I felt that, once there, my arm would be cut off. When the practitioner arrived he quieted my fears and told me that the doctor was right—the hospital was the place for me; to go right along and not to worry; that they would not cut my arm off.
Well, I went and they did not cut my arm off, though the young doctor that gave me the ether told me that the surgeon would do as he thought best, regardless of my wishes. That was Thursday morning; Saturday afternoon I was up and sitting in a chair, and I was up and dressed and about the ward every day during my brief stay in the hospital. Only once did I have the slightest pain and that was stopped as soon as I could get word to the practitioner. The first four days the nurse took my temperature and asked me the usual questions; then she laughingly remarked it was useless and discontinued it, and though she was puzzled because I showed none of the usual abnormal conditions and had no pain, she said I was all right and did not even restrict my diet. The first time my arm was dressed after the operation, the surgeon who had performed the operation and the head nurse were so astonished that for a moment they could not speak. The surgeon finally exclaimed, "Did you ever see anything like it in your life,—healed by first intention!" The surgeon had been so positive that blood poisoning would set in that he had said that he would not give fifteen cents for my chances with that, arm. In three weeks I was discharged.
