REMARKABLE SURGERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18380, 21 April 1923, Page 12

REMARKABLE SURGERY

SAFETY RAZOR USED.

DOCTOR SAVES GIRL..

STRANGLING TO DEATH, An unusual operation, reported in American newspapers, was performed on Miss Minnie Lifschitz, a resident in New York, in which a safety razor blade was pressed into service to save her from strangling to death. Miss Lifschitz became ill with influenza, and Dr. Leon Antell, who attended her, received a hurried call from the girl's home, saying that she seemed to be dying. On his arrival he found that the girl's windpipe had been affected, causing the muscles of the throat to contract, and that she was slowly strangling. Dr. Antell said ho realised that an immediate operation was imperative, but, not having any of his instruments with him, he asked the people in the house to get him a knife. None could be found sharp enough, and the best thing he could find was a safety razor blade. By this time, Dr. Antell said, the patient had stopped breathing and her heart had left off beating. He then made an incision in the throat with the blade, and after raising the windpipe a little out of the wound, cut a small opening in it. ..... Placing his lips against this incision, the physician then began to breathe the air from his lungs into those of the girl. After about 15 minutes a gasping sound came from the exposed windpipe. Miss Lifschitz, still unconscious, -was removed to Mount Sinai Hospital in an ambulance, and once there a silver tube was inserted in the windpipe through the incision. There is little doubt of her recovery, it was announced, and Dr. Antell said that within a few days he believed the girl's breathing could be turned back through the normal channels and the tube removed.