This month in history.

The article reports on the first performance of appendectomy in North America by Canadian rural doctor Abraham Groves on May 10, 1883 in Fergus, Ontario. The patient was a 12-year-old boy. Groves performed the operation on the kitchen table of a farmhouse. He practiced absolute cleanliness, using rubber gloves and boiling his instruments. The boy's father administered the anesthetic. Groves had performed about 6,000 appendectomies by 1924.