MODERN MIRACLES.

Shannon News, 27 November 1923, Page 2

MODERN MIRACLES.

SURGEON'S DESPERATE EXPERIMENT. 1 There are at least a dozen people going about.the world to-day who have been "dead" and are alive again. The daring of a small number of medical men, among whom Ave must now count Dr. Carl Bodon, of Budapeste, is responsible for this strange/ 'surgi'cal resurrection." Dr. Bodon, in the "Sunday Pictorial." thus describes his latest achievement: —

"He (the patient) lay relaxed and apparently lifeless in the chair, with head fallen backwards. The action of the heart definitely stopped. ... I was iwithout medical assistance and considerably agitated." Nevertheless an injection of adrenalin (an extract prepared from .glands of an animal) was given by a,long, hollow needle into one of the chambers of the heart, itself. The heart began to beat. The patient recovered. •'■.>' In other cases surgeons, and in France, have cut down on "the heart and grasped the organ in their*' hands. By gentle squeezing they have . succeeded in .setting it beating again. In one case nearly a quarte,f of an hour had elapsed. A dog's heart which had remained ' motionless for. half an hour was recently started again by massage. But the dog's nature was completely changed after its "resur- , rcctipn."

It/would; of course, be. merely cruel to try to restart the heart of a patient dying of an incurable disease. When, oil. the other hand, a healthy person "dies" on the operating table, as the result* of a shock, the position is altogether different. In „.. these eases "death" is not the end of a long process of dissolution, but a mere accident. The machine is still perfect.

What the men and women .feel who have" thus been brought back from the gates of death has not been disclosed. The presumption is that they are quite unaware, till afterwards, of. the .ordeal through which they have passed.