A BOLD BIT OF SURGERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11644, 4 May 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

A BOLD BIT OF SURGERY.

RESUSCITATION EFFECTED BY SQUEEZING A MAN'S HEART. A remarkable story is told in a Danish medical periodical relative to the treatment of a patient who had become asphyxiated from the administration of chloroform. The operating surgeon was a certain Dr. Mam;, but the method which he employed had previously been suggested by Dr. Prus, of Lemberg. A labourer, twenty-seven years old, who had suffered from sciatica, was to be operated upon to relieve that trouble. Chloroform was given aid the operation begun. The patient struggled, however, and when the process of anaesthesia was carried further he stopped breathing. Several expedients were resorted to in order to restore respiration, but in vain. And there was no longer any pulse. In this emergency Dr. Maag opened the chest, detached portions of the third and fourth ribs two and a-half inches long, and turned them back with the flap of f.esh. Through the opening thus made lie thrust his hand. The heart was firmlv grasped and compressed rhythmically. After a few squeezes that organ began to beat naturally. It whs necessary to employ compression again at times, and also to inflate the lungs artificially. But by these means the patient was kept alive for eleven hours and a-half, and Dr. Maag is inclined to believe that the man would have recovered were it not that one of the pleura was accidentally punctured. "