Remarkable Fatality

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7062, 23 January 1933, Page 8

Remarkable Fatality

METAL IN THE HEART,

John Ra-ab, a' youthful Vienna mechanic, has met his death in unusual circumstances, which for nearly a week remained unexplained. Raab had engaged himself to repair the barrel-organ of an aged mendicant. Of old and complicated design, the instrument had for 21 days resisted the young mechanic’s efforts to case the tightly-wound spring and so set the mechanism in motion. Eventually, wiiile Raab was again sitting bowed over the ancient instrument, the spring was all at once heard to unwind with lightning speed, and in the next moment the mechanic was seen to fall forward and expire. As Raab was known to possess a weak heart his parents were disposed to assume heart failure as the cause of death, the more so as no wound was visible on any part of his body. A closer examination, however, Tevealed a tiny spot above the youth’s heart, which, when X-rayed, betrayed the presence of a minute piece of metal. It was a fragment of a cog-wheel, which had been broken off by tlic rapid unwinding of the jammed spring, had shot out of the box, and, passing through waistcoat and shirt of the youth, had found its way into his heart.