GRAFTING EYE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 120, 24 May 1938, Page 9

GRAFTING EYE.

UNUSUAL OPERATION.

DEAD MURDERER'S GIFT.

WILL SIGHT BE RESTORED ?

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, April 20. Some day this summer a man will take his last look at ; the 6un-flooded world. He will walk through a metal door into a metal room, will take his seat in his San Quentin execution chamber and • stare desperately around him for the rescue that will never come. Will wait, frantic or resigned to death, while the cyanide "eggs" drop into a container, while the deadly invisible gas floods the room, floods his lungs, kills him.

That man may be Albert Kessell, bank robber who, with accomplices, engineered a bold escape from the world's largest penal institution at San Quentin, some 20 miles from San Francisco. This bold escape occurred in January 1936, when the whole California State Parole Board was held in hostage.

Or he may be Harrison Wells, a negro who killed a friend in Plumas County, Northern California, in a quarrel over "a trivial dollar debt. Each has been doomed to die some day this year/ each has offered to give the cornea of his left eye to the Rev. U. E. Harding, of Portland, Oregon, to save the minister from permanent blindness.

I Humanitarian's View. [ The details of the strange operation are not yet completed, but distinguished eye surgeons of San Francisco have speculated on what the procedure will probably be.

Dr. Leo Stanley, San Quentin phvsiclan, and Warden Court Smith doubted whether the Rev. Harding would be allowed to enter the prison hospital for the operation. "My understanding," Dr.j Stanley said, "is that it is not necessary to have the recipient of the 'graft* in immediate attendance." i

' Warden Smith, who is one of the leading penal humanitarians in the world, said: "This is a prison hospital and if we open the gates for one operation we would have to open them for others."

In any ease, American surgeons agreed, it would not be necessary for the Portland cleric to be actually in the .San Quentin penitentiary on the day his benefa'ctors die. He may be waiting in a temporary operating room in the little town of San Quentin Point or he may be in a hospital at San Rafael or in San Francisco.

It was stated that it is possible to remove the cornea and preserve it in a nomal salt solution as long as 10 days before it is grafted into the living eye. Better results, however, are obtained when the transfer is as immediate as possible.

One team of surgeons will be in the prison, waiting until Dr. Stanley announces that the condemned man is dead. Using a small knife with parallel blades, the surgeon will cut a rectangular opening in the cornea, which is described as "modified skin" with ten layers.

Delicate Operation. While he is doing that another team of surgeons, using the same little doublebladed knives, will cut another opening of the same size in the cornea of the Rev. Harding. It must be delicately done because one slip may mean the loss of the eye fluid—and permanent blindness.

The graft from the eye of Albert Kessell or Harrison Wells" will be carefully set into place in the minister's eye and stitched there, probably with very fine silk thread. In ten davs the world will know whether the gift from the condemned man has been a success. According to one San Francisco surgeon, the Rev. Harding may expect a marked increase in clarity of vision. Another was frankly doubtful of any permanent improvement as far as reading. of the Scriptures is concerned. A third, however, said: "I have seen miracles performed and this may mean permanent return of normal sight to the Rev. Harding."