A MODERN MIRACLE

Evening Star, Issue 19351, 10 September 1926, Page 3

A MODERN MIRACLE

‘‘DEAD” WOMAN Id YES FUR THIRTY HOURS. “A modern miracle of raising liio dead ” was the description given by the Lambeth coroner, Mr luglehy Oddic, to an - unavailing' feat of surgery at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London. During an operation on Mrs Adele WardcllT aged fifty-two, the wife of a house painter, of Southficlda, the woman ceased to breathe, and her pulse stopped. Her heart was massaged and began to heat again and circulation was resumed. For fifteen minutes she never breathed, but on air being pumped into tho lungs she started breathing again without assistance, and her heart went on beating also. , She was taken back to bed, and Jived for thirty hours. Dr John Barrett, house surgeon at St. Thomas’s Hospital, stated tho woman had an affection of_ the right kidney, and had had a previous operation in October, 1922. She was placed under an amosthetic, hut before they could start Hie operation she collapsed. No incision had been made except for massaging the heart. Dr B. Boggan, who gave Hie nruesthctic, said that when the surgeon massaged the heart it started to heat again, and a quarter of an hour later respiration was restarted and went on without assistance. The patient’s color was good., and she was sent, hack to bod. She remained in the same condition until the next night, when she declined rapidly and died. The Coroner said it was a great disappointment that, having lived so long, the woman should have faded away and died. It was a wonderful thing that she should have been restored from death to life. “ Denth by misadventure ” was the verdict.