STITCHING A MAN'S HEART.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 413, 23 January 1909, Page 10

STITCHING A MAN'S HEART.

HANDLED AND SEWN UP LIKE OTHEB . INJURED ORGANS. Much interest has •been. < caused by the operation of stitching up the heart of a Leeds butcher who was accidentally stabbed. The butcher, a young man named Edgar Greenwood, was-"larking", with another man named ■■ John William' Riggs in a butcher's shop, when a knife that Biggs:held entered Greenwood's body and pierced the heart.' Greenwood was at once removed to [the infirmary, where "it was decided that in order to save the man's life it would be necessary to stitch the wound in the heart. :. The heart was laid bare, and three: stitches, were rapidly and carefully put in. -The operation concluded without'mishap. Greenwood was going on very well so far as the injury to the heart was concerned, and the doctor's only fear was that other complications may prove, fataL .'■.-' ■/• '"'.''''■:' ,: ":. ■ "Until a very few ' years ago," said...a London surgeon, "any wound of the heart muscle was considered fatal, and no doubt many people died because 'doctors were afraid to operate.' Nowadays the" heart is handled and sewn up like any other organ which has been injured. \ .;; . "In ; a recent case a man was brought into my hospital with a largo revolver-shot wound over- the heart..' Although apparently at the point, of death the heart was exposed,.: a a bullet found embedded in the thick-flesh of, the apes was removed, and the wound war stitched up. The man recovered.' '■'■-:■■■ ■