Friday, May the 21st, 2004
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“And now,” he went on, “we get down to the real Cowper operation. Which, since you've looked it up, can be summed up in the simplest statement that it consists of the providing of a permanent channel through which a patient, with a pus-infected antrum, can wash that antrum out daily with antiseptic solution. For we use now the Cowper bone-threading burr which makes the standard channel of 3/16ths inch in diameter—just the size to hold that gold tube on my desk.” He pointed to the bit held in the round handle. “Believe it or not, Brister, I bought this bone-threading burr—which could have cost a full $30 to $50 in a surgical supply house—for 50 cents, at an auction of my old professor's effects in medical school. Just about the time I graduated. He made all his own instruments—had been a machinist in Scotland before he became a doctor. 50 cents—no more! A perfect Cowper alveolar threader.“—Harry Stephen Keeler, The Mysterious Mr I