NAIL IN CHILD’S STOMACH

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24898, 11 June 1946, Page 2

NAIL IN CHILD’S STOMACH

FATHER MARKS ELECTROMAGNET

SUCCESSFUL OPERATION

(P.A.) GISBORNE. June 10. A home-made eiectrormagnet was used to extract a 2j-inch nail from the stomach of a boy aged two and a half years at the Cook Hospital , on Saturday. The child is Roger OpenShaw, the gon of Leading Aircraftman J. E. Openshaw, a radio technician, who employed all his technical skill and. physical capacity in a race against time constructing an electromagnet in an attempt to remove the nail before it reached an inaccessible point in the boy’s stomach. Earlier an X-ray had revealed the presence of th© nail, which the hospital authorities endeavoured to pass through the bowel. Faced with the prospect of an operation for the removal of the nail the father, aided by another radio operator at the Gisborne air radip station, experimented with magnets, samples of which they submitted to the hospital authorities, who encouraged and assisted the work. After two nights’ constant work he constructed an eipotro-maflnet small enough to pass down the child’s gullet into its stomach and strong enough to exert a pull to extract the nail. A meter and its controls were ne-. >cessary to balance the flow of current from the battery to prevent the eoil from burning out at a critical moment. Openshaw watched the crucial test of the apparatus on the child on Saturday, a doctor controlling the current while another watched the progress of the magnet through an x-ray screen. “It was a long chance that came off,” said the father after the extraction of the nail. The child returned homp yesterday, showing no ill-effects.