(dissenting).
It seems to me my brethren go too far in this opinion. The difficulty arises from the way in which they state the. proposition. They say “Everybody knows * * * that it is not approved surgical practice to leave in a patient’s, body a small bit of gauze * * * or any other foreign nonabsorbable substance, no matter how small.” Of course the fact that a foreign substance is left-in a wound is not approved by the medical profession. But the question is whether the surgeon’s procedure is approved regardless of whether or not it has an unfortunate incident. I would suppose that in many operations calculated risks must be taken. Failure does not necessarily reflect on the surgeon. Of course a procedure which would risk leaving scissors or clamps in a wound is. clearly unreasonable, but a procedure which risks leaving a single fiber from a thread does not seem to me to be so clearly unreasonable. The point is thajt. the question before the court is not whether the result, or a by-product, of' an operation is approved by the medical profession but is whether the surgeon followed approved procedure. For this reason the presence of a few threads of gauze is not of itself prima facie proof that the cause was a departure from that degree of skill and care approved by surgeons. I am unable to say how minutely a surgeon should examine a sponge before, during and after an operation, how carefully he should avoid cutting a few threads from the sponges, how thoroughly he should explore a wound before closing the incision. It may be that if he did; these things as surgeons think they should be done the foreign body would' not have been left. But perhaps the-exercise of all the care surgeons think is reasonable would not have prevented the-unfortunate occurrence. The jury needed expert testimony on this point. Without such testimony there was no prima facie proof of departure from approved surgical practice.