EMERGENCY OPERATION

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 7

EMERGENCY OPERATION

Seaman’s Surgery In Storm (NJZ. Press Association —Copprtpht) LONDON, January 11. The mate of a trawler performed an emergency operation on a deckhand with a do-it-your-self surgery kit during a violent Arctic storm, London newspapers reported today. Mountainous waves breaking over the deck of the trawler Grimsby Town off the North Cape of Iceland had knocked down a deckhand, Bob Altmore, who suffered a serious head injury in the fall. The mate. Frank Brown, aged 44, carried Altmore to an emergency table set up in the skipper’s bathroom. Because the nearest naval vessel was miles away, and the trawler could not put into an Icelandic port to get a doctor because of the current fishing dispute, the mate decided to operate on the spot. While the mate's brother, skipper Len Brown, fought to keep the ship steady, the mate smashed a glass tube in the surgery kit and took out a surgical needle ready threaded. The patient, still conscious, was given a drink of strong black coffee because there waa no anaesthetic. In four minutes the mate had finished stitching up the wound. Twenty-four hours later a surgeon from the frigate H.M.S. Undine examined Altmore and told the mate: “I couldn’t have done a better job myself.” Five days later the mate removed the stitches with a razor blade and his patient has now recovered.