The body temperature and white blood cell count of the cases with appendical perforation were higher than that of the cases with acute appendicitis only.
In the last 40 years - even as people have gotten even richer and continued to eat all sorts of junk, the rate of appendicitis has actually dropped almost 60%.
In fact, a doctor who got appendicitis there back in the 1960s had to take out his own appendix using only local anesthesia and a couple of makeshift assistants.
After those first few words of sympathy he treated Kitty, not as though she had just suffered a devastating experience, but rather as though she had come in from Shanghai for a change after an operation for appendicitis.