MEDICAL MIRACLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 23

MEDICAL MIRACLE.

"DEAD" MAN REVIVED. METHYLENE SAVES LIFE. DRAMA IN HOSPITAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAX FRANCISCO, July 6. A man wiio by all rules should have been dead, lived to tell his tale in San Francisco. After drinking- two ounces of hydrocyanic acid, usually considered instantaneously fatal, Eugene Kratzer, 08, of San Francisco, was revived at Central Emergency Hospital by methylene blue.

Kratzer drank the poison half an hour before the first of three injections was administered to him under the direction of Dr. ,1. (J. (Jeiger, and lie lived to establish an astounding life-saving record.

Dr. Oeiger, medical officer of health for Sail Francisco, whose experiments in the administration of the methylene blue solution have now saved seven lives, said this was the first time a person who had taken cyanide in acid form had been saved, and added that in no previous case had the treatment been delayed so long as half an hour. Brought to the hospijtal in a condition which made it impossible for physicians to find a pulse or note respiration, Kratzer forty minutes later placed his arm about his daughter, Elizabeth, accepted her embrace and expressed sorrow that he had intended suicide.

ihiee hours iiftor taking the poison Kratzcr tried to walk out of the hospital, but was not permitted to do so. Ho did walk around the ward, however, and loudly demanded food. Physicians said that prior to taking the* poison Kratzer had had two drinks of wine. They added that the wine should have hastened the action of the poison and that it acted as a deterrent to the effectiveness of the methylene blue. f thought 1 should have died," explained the would-be suicide victim as he gave an interview from the hospital bed into which he had been placed for observation to determine whether he would finally survive. "I worked in a drug store in Pennsylvania 18 years ago and always thought hydrocyanic acid would cause death just like that," he said, ending with a snap of his fingers. "I stole this poison three years ago and planned to kill myself.

"I can't explain how I felt after I drank the poison," Kratzer said. "I just passed out and then 1 found myself here. How did I get here? How* did my daughter get here? I am glad you did it, though; you did wonderful for me.

lhe daughter found her father unconscious and rushed to an adjaceu; drug store to summon help, hi her excite" ment the wrong address was given, delaying the arrival of the father at the hospital. As the physicians battled desperately to inject the l."< 0 cubic centimeters of methylene blue, pumped his stomach and gave him. oxygen, the "irl huddled outside the hospital room. In little more than half an hour he was wheeled from the operating room to a ward. His daughter rushed to him and leaned over him, smothering him with kisses. He smiled, lie sobbed, put his arms about the girl ana patted her shoulders. She then fled from the hospital hurrying to her prostrated mother to inform her of the miracle of modern medicine.

I)r. Geigcr said that there was everv indication tlmt Kratzer, who had been brought to the hospital apparently dead would survive and recover from the paralysis that had spread over his hod v. . health director explained that the immediate action of the eyan-.do was to put a brake upon the entire muscular and respiratory system.