HUMAN BONFIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

HUMAN BONFIRE.

BURNT DURING OPERATION.

Three years ago a designer named Marino Chassin had to undergo an operation for appendicitis. After tho antithetic had been administered the patient was, according to tho medical ritual, washed thrico with soap, with ether, and with methylated spirit. When on the point of operating the surgeon noticed a sore not far from the spot whero his incision had to be made. He called for the plantinum needle, as uncauterised the pimple might have infected the wound Unfortunately, all trace of tho methylated spirits had. not been removed by the compresses used for that purpose, and the incandescent needle set tho patient's body on fire. When Chassin had partially recovered from the double effects of operation and burns he sued tho surgeon for £2400. The tribunal appointed as experts three doctors, who, with professional solidarity, declared that the operation had been carried out in accordance with the rules of the faculty. M. Chassin's accident .was, they argued in effect, Chassin's own fault. His physical conformation was peculiar, and not at all what it ought to have been. If he had been shaped after tho model of the best medical text-books his body wo,uld not, when laid on the operating table, have formed a series <>£ "pockets" in which the methylated spirit collected. His back, too, made an arch, which, however graceful from an aesthetic, was highly inconvenient from a surgical point of view. The result was that the spirit spread from it and saturated the cloths beneath. These ingenious arguments did not satisfy the court, which held, by an -unexpected deviation into common sense, that it was not so much for tho unconscious patient to conform to convential medical requirements as for the surgeon to adapt his tactics to tho needs of the "scene of operations." The surgeon's little bonfire will therefore cost him £600, v, Sich he must pay to his pai tient, whoso professional utility has, his ; advocate states, suffered a diminution of "from 3 to 5 per cent,"