EPIC OF SURGERY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 19 January 1927, Page 12

EPIC OF SURGERY.

OPEN-AIR. OPERATION. SYDNEY, Jan. 17. An epic in the history of medical ■science is being enacted in the lonely Burragorang Valley, 50 miles irorn Sydney, where a young lad, Allan Otago, shot in the kidney during a hunting trip in the New Year holiday*®, lies-at death’.® door.

Orago, with hie brother and two companions, left his home at Wentworth Falls on New Year’s Day lor a hunting trip into the Burrogorang Valley, a wiki, inaccessible place, with no communication with the outer world other than a precipitous goat track, which drops 2000 feet down the side of Mount Solitary. During the day, one of the party, who was at the rear of Crago, fired at & rabbit but the bullet struck Orago in the back, and passed through lii-s kidney. Realising that to move the wounded boy would mean certain death, Johann Ort, who had had Boy Scout first-aid training, moved Crago to' a deserted hut, and .sent- to Wentworth Balls lor

■ assistance. At dawn on January 2. Mr. and Mrs. Orago, who are wealthy people, with Dr. Wilson, of "Wentworth Falls, and Nurse Bale, 'and a host of other helpers, bearing food supplies, blankets, and comforts, entered the valley by the precarious goat, track 2000 feet down a precipitous^mountain side, while that afternoon a. faint coooe from the mountain .side above announced the arrival of Dr. Craig, an eminent Sydney surgeon. The Sydney party represented a strange spectacle. Followed by five helpers. Dr. Craig led the way down the steep sides of the mountain, carrying his delicate instruments and flasks of anaesthetics. After him came a special surgical nurse. Miss Laurie, with further operating apparatus. Then followed a party of men bearing the portable operating table. Necessarily their progress was slow, .and to the watchers in the valley below it was a race with death. Finally the valley floor was reached, and without loss of time Dr., Craig undertook the operation, which was successful, and with expert treatment which was at hand the injured’ lad is to-day well m the road to recovery.