DUELLING DOCTOR

Wairarapa Daily Times, 16 February 1937, Page 8

DUELLING DOCTOR

AN OPPONENT VANQUISHED,

BUDAPEST, Sunday

“I want to get them off my chest,” said Dr. Francis Sarga,- referring to three remaining duels, one of which he fought to-day with a former suitor of his wife, 51. Vitez do Vazsony, a bank official. This leaves one duel against a civil servant, and another against an opponent who was wounded in a previous duel when police intervened. M. do Vazsony recently testified against Dr. Sarga in a lawsuit by the latter against his wife Is family. Dr. Sarga subsequently refused to acknowledge M. de Vazsony’s salutation, declaring- that he replied to greetings only from gentlemen. The result was a duel of 14 rounds with sterilised Italian sabres at a fencing school, lasting for 90 minutes. The contestants stripped to the waist and wore neck bandages. Dr. Sarga, with his customary gorilla yell, in the seventh round evaded a thrust by M. de Vazsony, and seriously wounded him in the hip. A surgeon bandaged the wound. The seconds vainly urged a reconciliation, and the duel was resumed. M. de Vazsony was wounded in the neck in the eighth round, and in the fourteenth broke his knee. The doctors then stopped the contest.

A Budapest mes’sage on 4th November stated that, seeking to vindicate thei honour of his wife, which had allegedly been aspersed, Dr. Francis Sarga challenged nine men to duels. He fought the first two duels with pistols -secretly in a stubble field on the outskirts of the city. His first opponent was wounded in the arm and taken to hospital. In the second duel both parties missed and became reconciled. A third duel was stopped by the police after Dr. Sarga had inflicted a fourinch wound in his opponent’s head. Subsequently Dr. Sarga’s wife gave,birth to a daughter, and Dr. , Sarga, joffered, in the spirit of Christinas and ,in celebration of his first-born, tp forgive his wifes’ traducers and to withdraw the remaining duelling challenge if apologies were offered.