URGENT OPERATION

Evening Star, Issue 22719, 5 August 1937, Page 10

URGENT OPERATION

SPECIAL JOURNEY ABROAD DUNBACK RESIDENTS' MUNIFICENCE A magnificent community btiort by the residents of Dunback and of the surrounding farms has enabled a boy of 12, Frank Murphy, to bo rushed to England for an urgent operation that cannot bo safely carried out m New Zealand—the removal of a tumour on the brain. He and his mother are now on board the Baugitiki, the £3OO necessary to send them on this life_and-death mission being subscribed or promised in 20 minutes. Popular with everyone, Frank is a Boy Scout, and it was his scout master, the Rev. Georg© Coley, formerly associated with the Roslyn troop, who arranged to hold a special meeting. m the local church after the service on Sunday week. Everybody was only too willing to subscribe for his transport. There was a queue at the collecting tables; shipping companies, Government officials, the Dunedin Hospital staff, the Rotary Club. Toe H, and the banks all energetically assisted. The Boy Scouts’ headquarters in London has been advised by cable to keep a kindly eye on Mrs Murphy and Frank, and representatives of the Rotarv Club will meet the vessel at London. One thing is certain, and that is that there is little chance of them being lost iu, their strange sur_ roundings. . , The problem of arranging with a surgeon to carry out the delicate operation presented some real difficulties, but even this was successfully overcome. Cables were sent to doctors in Boston, Baltimore, and Edinburgh without satisfaction. _ Then, late on Saturday night, Mr Cairns, of the London Hospital, cabled that he was willing to carry out ono of the most intricate operations in modem medicine. The Hospital authorities saw Frank and his mother safely to the train on Monday morning, ' and a special corn_, parturient provided by the Railways Department was shunted to the siding alongside the interisland ferry when tho train arrived at Lytteltpn. .Thm was the first occasion on which either traveller had been on board a boat. A chaplain and two men of Too H assisted them to the Rangitiki at Wellington.