MATERNAL AFFECTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3580, 2 January 1883, Page 4

MATERNAL AFFECTION.

A touching instance of maternal affection is recorded in a recent number of a medical journal by a Alanchester pln'sh-ian. Dr William AValter, of that city, was scut for to attend a young lady avlio was dying from the effects of severe hemorrhage. AVlien the doctor arrived his patient was lying still and unconscious ; her face and lips were blanched: her eyes had assumed that dull and lifeless appearance Avhich only death, or its near approach, can produce. Respiration Avas scarcely perceivable, and the pulse could only at intervals be felt. Dr AValter, whose; experience of such cases is great, knew at once that there was only one chance for her, A'iz., transfusion of blood from the arm of a healthy person to the blanched limb of the moribund. The lady's husband cheerfully consented to give his bloood to save his wife, but the mother would not hear of it. Although she knew the risk attending the operation, she begged to be the donor. Doctors are not all made of cast-iron, and this one could not resist the entreaties of that loving mother avlio offered her life's blood at any cost est to save her darling child. AVhilc Dr AValter was performing venesection on the mother in an adjoining room, and before he had had time to collect more than -loz of blood, his assistant acquainted him (hathis patient was apparently lifeless. AVho can depict the agony endured by husband and mother during the next fifteen minutes 'i The physician hurried to the bed-room to prepare the lady's arm for the reception of the blood. He found a vein not without great difficulty—isolated it from the surrounding tissues, made a small opening in its walls, and inserted the silver nozzle of the injecting apparatus. In from ten to twelve minutes all the blood Avas injected, and almost immediately respiration became distinctly A-isible and audiablu : the pulse returned to the Avrist, and in the course of a quarter of an hour the insensibility gave way to consciousness, and she Avas able to recognise her friends. Her convalescence was steady and uncomplicated, and Avithin a month she was able to walk out of doors.