UNBORN BABY IN BOY'S STOMACH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23091, 2 November 1949, Page 4

UNBORN BABY IN BOY'S STOMACH

TOKYO. A Japanese doctor in Tokyo successfully removed an unborn baby recently from the stomach of a baby boy. The embryo was at the same stage of development as a six-months-old unborn child and possessed fat, tissue, bone and hair. It was drawing nourishment from the live baby, which was eight-months-old at the time of the operation. Doctors at the hospital said they had never heard of a similar case. The baby, named Masao Takahashi. of Surnida Ward was brought by its parents to the hospital at the age of six months- They were alarmed because it was wasting. The abdomen was swollen. Dr. K. Kumanoto, who said that the baby's appearance was similar to pregnancy, diagnosed a tumour, and called in Dr. Y. Tamura to operate. Dr. Tamura said that he found the embyro in a sac formed inside the baby’s abdominal wall by the peritonal lining. It was drawing nourishment from the baby's bloodstream, and was slightly larger than a man’s fistIf not removed, he said, the embyro would have grown like a normal unborn child until it killed the living baby, cither through malnutrition or through pressing against its lungs and smothering it. The embyro had been formed by the distorted growth of twin cells in the mother's womb, said Dr. Kumanoto. One cell had developed normally, while the other had not, and the norm-ally-developing cell had grown around and enveloped the abnormal cell, which began to develop after the birth of the baby formed from the normal cell. Before birth, both cells had been drawing nourishment from the mother, but the normal cell got the greatest share. After birth, the abnormal cell got more nourishment and was able to grow, he added. The baby, now 11 months old, is a normal, healthy child.