BULLET IN HEART

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160732, 19 August 1920, Page 7

BULLET IN HEART

REMARKABLE RECOVERY, BALLET GIRL’S EXPERIENCE. MELBOURNE, August 14. Less than a year ago Miss Maxine Mayle, a ballet dancer, lay in the Sydney Hospital, with a bullet in her heart. To-day she is one of the most active of a troupe at the Tivoli' Theatre, Melbourne. She has no precedent for being alive, for the bullet, which, as the result of an accident, lodged in the back of her heart, was three-quarters of an inch in length. Medical men came from afar to see this girl who defied death, and she became the pet of the institution. After five months, when leading medical men had studied the case, an operation was decided upon. A surgeon who had performed a somewhat similar operation in England during the war—though in that case the patient collapsed and died—declined the task, on the ground that the bullet having lodged two inches higher than in the previous ease, failure appeared to be inevitable. A FORLORN HOPE. Dr Skipton Stacey then performed tlys surgical “forlorn hope.” the operation taking three hours and a half. At the end of a week the patient was out of danger. The case was regarded as a surgical marvel, and Miss Mayle had the unusual experience of being lectured on before a full meeting of the British Medical Association In Sydney. Accounts of the case have appeared in the medical journals. Miss Mayle is now in perfect health, and the only evidence she bears of the remarkable experience through which she passed is a scar over the heart.