Medicine: Yank It Yourself

Sadao Ohmura, 32, a surgeon in the municipal hospital at Shizuoka, near Yokohama, had waited ever since he was a medical student for a chance to prove his contention that "we Japanese are more skillful with our hands than Westerners." Last week, with his abdomen tense and sore, he knew that the eagerly hoped-for day had arrived. Staggering into an operating room, he got a nurse to sterilize his midriff and hands, help him into a sterile smock and mask. Then he clambered onto the operating table. When Chief Surgeon Mikio Takahashi protested, Dr. Ohmura replied: "I have only one appendix;...