I just recently had my appendix removed, and I was wondering at what point in history where I would have met my untimely death as a result of it.
If possible, I would also like to know when the procedure came to the Buffalo area and became widespread enough for a middle-class family to able to make use of it.
I apologize if this question isn't up to /r/AskHistorians standards, but an appropriate answer would be very interesting to me.
It could be argued that an appendectomy is still a non-trivial surgical procedure.
About 1% (one in every 100 people who have the operation) die.
No intra abdominal surgery was "trivial" in the era before antibiotics. Peritonitis, the infection of the inside lining of the abdomen, was near uniformly fatal. The widespread use of antibiotics changed that - between 1935 and 1950, appendicitis mortality in the US dropped by 85%.