MAN’S MAD WAGER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2445, 24 June 1922, Page 1

MAN’S MAD WAGER.

SWALLOWS FIVE NAILS.

Charles Rogers, aged 28, swal< lowed five 24-inch French nails for a wager at Chatham. He walked to London, a distance of thirty miles, and was finally picked up in Blackfriars Road in agony. He was taken to Guy’s Hospital in a critical condition. Rogers, a bargee, told the surgeon that he was speaking to two men, when they wagered him £1 that he would not swallow six large nails that he was handling. Rogers thought about it for a moment, and then began swallowing them one by one. By the time he bad reached the sixth lie was in such pain that he gave up, and his “friends”, then ran away, refusing to pay the bet. * “He was in terrible pain when he arrived,” said the surgeon in charge of the ease at Guy’s. “We Xrayed him and found four nails in the stomach and one in the right brochus tube. The nail in the bronchus was the most serious consideration, and demanded an immediate operation, so we opened the windpipe and tried to pull the nail out but we were unable o reach it. “Rogers was in a much more serious condition the following morning, for the nail in his chest was causing pneumonia. We operated in the afternoon, passed a long pair of tweezers through the mouth, and got out the nail with much difficulty. Xow that the nail is out, however, the attack of pneumonia is worse than ever. The other four nails are still in the stomach, and we shall try to take them out; they have already been there five days.”