OPERATION HOAX.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 2028, 18 September 1913, Page 6

OPERATION HOAX.

SURGEONS' JOKE IN A LINER "What becomes of the boisterous medical students and where no our grave doctors come from?" "asks one of Robert Louis Stevenson's characters in The Wrecker. It has been left for a patty of eminent American physioians and surgeons to show that beneath the surface the practitioner is a student still and to carry oat a "rag" that will till the breast of the student with envy. Eighty American physicians, including the •- fficers cf some of t e greatest hospitals in the Unitei States, left New York last month in tne Bremen f r a touriin Europe to conclude at the International Oou gress. On the evening of tne third day a masquerade ball was in progress when JDr Richard Kovacs, clinical assistant of tha New York Polyclinic Hospital, rushed forward.

"Stop the music," he cried. "Dr. Fitzgibbon has been taken seriously ill. An operation may be necessarv.''

Instantly t'e music stopped. The dancers went slowly and witn hus e i steps to t e dining rom, W'ere Dr. Jt'itzbibbon lay, wisite faced and gr aning heavily. A consultation was rspidly held, and it was decided that, alt: ough there was no hope for t e patient, an operation would be tried.

Fifteen medical meu stool round the patient Dr. Seaman, of Philadelphia, and Dr Albee, professor of orthopaedic surgery in the University of Vermont dressed in < peraing clot es, wit •gl ve han"s and muffled faces, dipped their instruments in the antiseptic Tt>e crowd of passengers in t ; e gallerv of the dining room lo ked on, too fascinated to withdraw and too moved to speak. With the quick land of the practised operator Dr. Seaman made an incision. The surgeons rand came oat. The awed spectators gradually became aware that he held an enormous i am. Apples, grapes, a loaf of bread, a pineapple i;fixt appeared. But it was only weu the patient sat up and in dee > tones demanded a glass of beer that the semi-hysterical oulookers realised that they had been noaxed. The grave and reveren * leaders of American medicine had enacted a mighty "bluff "