Eden Recovering From Successful Operation

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28253, 15 April 1957, Page 9

Eden Recovering From Successful Operation

(Rec. 9 p.m.) BOSTON, April 14. Sir Anthony Eden today was reported to be making a good recovery from the successful operation to repair the bile duct which has been troubling him intermittently over the last four years. A spokesman of the New England Baptist Hospital, where the operation was performed yesterday morning, said: “All signs to date have been satisfactory for a good recovery. Sir Anthony is receiving intravenous feeding of glucose, as is usual, and his post-operative condition is good.” Lady Eden was at the hospital most of yesterday and visited Sir Anthony Eden in his room late in the afternoon for nearly an hour. “Condition Good” Dr. Richard Cattell, of the Lahey Clinic, who performed the operation, and Sir Horace Evans, Sir Anthony Eden’s private physician, had visited him before Lady Eden saw him and later told reporters: “His condition is good this evening. He is • conscious and his wife is visiting him.” Dr. Cattell’s operation was aimed at removing a Y-shaped tube which he had inserted in the bile duct in 1953. The tube was to help support the duct, which had become infected after a London operation a few months earlier in 1953. This tube was subsequently believed to have been responsible for recurrent fevers which had attacked the Prime Minister. Yesterday’s operation disclosed that, apparently unknown to Sir Anthony Eden, the rubber-plastic tube passed completely from his body. Instead, the surgeons found that the fever had. been caused by a constriction of one side of the bile duct, and they dilated this. Hope For Recovery Dr. Cattell and Sir Horace Evans said after the operation they hoped that Sir Anthony could now look forward to complete relief from his troublesome condition. The text of the bulletin issued after the operation was: “Sir Anthony Edeq underwent an operation this morning for relief of bile duct obstruction. The site of the obstruction was found in the right hepatic duct. The constricted area was dilated. This

condition was the cause of the recent attacks of fever. The tube which had been inserted at the operation in June, 1953, had been passed as often occurs. It was not found necessary to insert a new tube. There was no inflammation of the colon and no malignancy. “He withstood the operative procedure well.”

The bulletin was signed by Dr. Cattell, Sir Horace Evans and Dr. John Norcross, of the Lahey staff, who observed the operation.