SURGEON GOES MAD

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 December 1925, Page 3

SURGEON GOES MAD

SENSATION AT OPERATION. How a highly-skilled surgeon went mad while engaged in an operation, and how a desperate struggle ensued

to prevent him from killing his unconscious patient, is the dramatic story told in a message from Tschita, a lonely town far beyond Irkutsk, on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The surgeon, Dr. Rasomin, had charge of the hospital, and the patient was admitted for immediate treatment for appendicitis. In the middle of the operation Dr. Rasomin stopped and, waving his instrument, shouted: “What’s the use of this sort of work? One stab of the knife and—” The surgeon was clearly about to su’t his action to his words, and raised his knife to plunge it into the unconscious ~ patient’s heart, when an assistant grappled with him, pushed him into a corner only a couple of yards away from the operating table, and, with the aid of his colleagues, managed to hold the soon-raging lunatic there. The nurses fled in terror, but no help came in response to loud cries, and the operation had. to be' continued by one of the assistants, while the other kept the madman at bay. Had the surgeon gained the upper hand there is little doubt that the patient and the two assailants would have been murdered. After the patient had been removed Dr. Rasomin was secured' and taken to a lunatic asylum. He is believed to be incurably insane.