Anatomy of Approach to the Abdomen.

There is no muscle in the body whose exact anatomy concerns the surgeon so frequently and in so many important ways as does the rectus abdominis. Some operations on the kidney invoke an approach peculiar to that organ, the gallbladder invites attack by an oblique.incision below and parallel to the right costal margin, but with these exceptions, it is safe to say that the majority of major operations on the abdominal contents demand an incision which implicates the rectus abdominis. Even the many strange and ingenious incisions for operations on the gall-bladder, sanctioned by custom and by the names of illustrious surgeons of the past, are becoming suspect, and are giving way to the simple par median approach. The penalties attaching to these fundamentally unsound methods are less serious than those that follow departures from the median or paramedian incision in the lower abdomen.